Australians are being told they have a right to be deeply suspicious about trusting big accounting firms after a second consultancy scandal.
KPMG Australia executives were grilled by members of a parliamentary committee in Canberra on Friday over allegations the company misused confidential documents from its client Lendlease to develop audit pitches for Westpac and Dexus.
The hearing comes after another major accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia (PwC), was found to have leaked secret Australian government tax plans to corporations to help avoid a law PwC had helped write.
“Two of the big four firms have the dubious honour of having united the Australian parliament across all political divides around the failure to be honest and to act appropriately,” Greens senator Barbara Pocock told KPMG Australia’s former chief executive Andrew Yates at a hearing on Friday.
She asked Mr Yates what he would say to the Australian people, who now felt deeply mistrustful of the big four firms: KPMG, PwC, EY and Deloitte.
KPMG Australia made $653 million from handling 297 contracts for the federal government in 2025, a substantial slice of its total revenue of $2.3 billion, Senator Pocock noted.
Mr Yates said he left the profession feeling the big four accounting firms were incredibly important, strong and good institutions.
“They’re all focused on delivering good client service,” he said.
“They’re all focused on serving the public good but they’re big, and they make mistakes.”
Senator Pocock said she was “gobsmacked” by the response.
In 2025, KPMG partners were paid $710,000, about 10 times more than the average wage, she said.
Senator Pocock said she was deeply concerned about the narrative Mr Yates was offering, that KPMG had done something wrong and was taking the fall.
“This is a partnership of shared responsibility,” she said, asking Mr Yates who else should be resigning.
He replied he had left the firm and had no view on the matter.
Committee chair Deborah O’Neill questioned Mr Yates about why he had not resigned earlier when the allegations involved Australian-based corporations such as Westpac, Dexus and Macquarie.
“When you found out about Optus-Singtel, which is Singaporean-based, then it became a problem,” the Labor senator said.
“It took a lot to sink the boat. It took Singapore to get involved, before I said ‘hey, I better get out of here’.”
Mr Yates said he resigned from the firm where he had worked since 1989 to take accountability for his failures of oversight.
“This is not how I had wanted to leave KPMG,” he said.
While yet to face any major penalty, KPMG is under a three-month moratorium on new finance department work and has been referred to the National Anti-Corruption Commission by Senator Pocock.