Australia’s corporate regulator told a federal parliamentary inquiry on Friday that the big four accounting firms have logged 551 complaints of alleged audit misconduct since mid-2023. But for the first time in this long-running inquiry, it wasn’t the accounting firms facing the toughest questions. It was the regulator itself.
What ASIC told the committee
ASIC’s executive director of enforcement and compliance, Chris Savundra, told the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services in Sydney that KPMG, PwC, EY and Deloitte have together received 551 whistleblower complaints alleging audit misconduct since 1 July 2023.
ASIC chair Sarah Court clarified the scope: the complaints relate to whether registered auditors misused or shared confidential client information, and ASIC used its compulsory information-gathering powers to obtain the underlying material.
Court was careful not to overstate the figure. “I don’t want to suggest that there’s, you know, 550 serious whistleblower issues,” she told the hearing, adding that ASIC still has significant work ahead assessing which complaints warrant further investigation or enforcement action.
When Greens Senator Barbara Pocock asked whether the 551 complaints were spread roughly evenly across the four firms, in the order of 125 to 130 each, Court asked that the hearing move off-camera before answering. As a result, the per-firm breakdown was not made public at Friday’s session.
A tabled report calls KPMG’s disclosures “deceptive”
The sharpest material to emerge from Friday’s hearing was a report by law firm Allens, tabled at the inquiry, examining how KPMG handled the whistleblower complaint that triggered the broader audit-leaks scandal: the alleged misuse of confidential Lendlease board papers to support KPMG’s audit-tender bids for Westpac and Dexus.
Allens found that KPMG’s 2024 and 2025 Transparency Reports omitted any mention of an active whistleblower complaint, “despite indisputable evidence one existed.” The firm’s conclusion was blunt: those reports were “not transparent at all but misleading — at best deceptive, at worst fraudulent.”
KPMG had classified the original 2024 complaint as an HR matter rather than an audit-quality or transparency issue, which is how it came to be left out of documents that regulators, investors and the public rely on.
A KPMG spokesperson told the ABC the firm is “progressing work to address integrity issues, strengthen accountability and rebuild trust” under an action plan launched in June, while acknowledging “there is more to do.” KPMG has already cut almost 400 jobs this year following the scandal, after clients including Macquarie ended their engagements with the firm.
Appreciate the newsletter but aren’t ready to pay for a subscription? Grab us a beer or snag the exclusive ad spot at the top of next week's newsletter.
The regulator under scrutiny
Senator Pocock used Friday’s hearing to challenge KPMG leadership’s repeated assurances of reform. She noted the committee had “spent hours listening to the leadership of KPMG… telling us that they’ve turned over a new leaf, that they are a new leadership, ‘there is new culture, trust us,’ and yet here we are.”
Her expectation, she said, is that new leadership “requires delivery of outcomes,” and that KPMG will be called back before the committee if it doesn’t deliver.
But the sharpest challenge to ASIC itself came from a separate whistleblower, whose June 2026 email to the regulator was also tabled at the inquiry. The email, following an earlier disclosure attempt in December 2021, accused ASIC of a “condescending tone” and argued the regulator “will need to be dragged kicking and screaming to take action that has been clearly available against at least one of the big four.”
The whistleblower went further, alleging ASIC had “substantially done nothing bar tacitly endorse and further encourage misconduct,” despite auditor misconduct being listed among ASIC’s own stated regulatory priorities for both 2025 and 2026.
ASIC rejected that characterisation in a statement to the ABC: “ASIC takes all whistleblower reports and allegations of misconduct seriously… assesses and progresses matters in a timely and methodical manner.” The regulator said a number of investigations and enforcement actions are already underway.
Two further details complicate any simple read of the relationship between ASIC and the firms it regulates. Senator Pocock said ASIC signed new contracts with KPMG in March 2026, the same period the scandal became public. And the current chair of the Tax Practitioners Board, Peter de Cure, spent 25 years as a KPMG partner before taking the role.
Neither fact establishes wrongdoing on its own, but both feed the underlying question this inquiry keeps circling back to: whether Australia’s audit regulators are positioned closely enough to the firms they oversee to regulate them without fear or favour.
The federal government has separately been weighing, since at least July, whether to require the big four to structurally separate their audit and consulting divisions. The reasoning is that a firm auditing a client it also hopes to sell consulting services to has a built-in conflict. No decision has been made, but Friday’s hearing adds fresh, official evidence to that debate.
Two more developments worth noting
Separately on Friday, administrators for Bathla Group, one of Sydney’s largest residential developers, held the company’s first creditors’ meeting after it entered voluntary administration last week. Administrators from Teneo said Bathla owes known creditors about $3.4 billion, including $3.08 billion to secured lenders.
Its 219 development sites carry a preliminary valuation near $4.9 billion, though administrators stressed that value is largely illiquid, tied up in land and part-built projects financed lender by lender. Teneo is in “positive discussions” with five lenders to keep some construction running, with Monday morning the effective deadline; sites whose lenders don’t participate will likely see work stop.
And in Sydney, phone-tap recordings played this week at the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption’s Operation Rosny hearings show fugitive property developer Jean Nassif describing former premier Dominic Perrottet as his “boy,” while boasting of influence over the Liberal Party.
Dominic Perrottet has not been accused of wrongdoing and referred the matter to ICAC himself in 2022; it’s his brother, Charles Perrottet, now in his fifth day of evidence over whether he used family connections to pressure the state’s former building commissioner on Nassif’s behalf.
What to watch
The per-firm breakdown of the 551 complaints may surface once Friday’s off-camera evidence is made public. The government’s decision on an audit-consulting split remains pending. Bathla’s Monday funding deadline will determine how many of its sites keep building. And Charles Perrottet remains under summons at ICAC, with counsel assisting yet to release him from further questioning.
Follow us on all major podcasting platforms and social media channels for important updates. Your support keeps independent journalism alive!For more in-depth coverage on these stories and other news affecting Australia and the world, subscribe to readmencari.com. Support our independent journalism by listening to our podcasts on all major platforms and considering a subscription to help us continue delivering fearless reporting free from financial and political influence.
As well as knowing you’re keeping MENCARI alive, you’ll also get:
Get breaking news AS IT HAPPENS – Gain instant access to our real-time coverage and analysis when major stories break, keeping you ahead of the curve
Unlock our COMPLETE content library – Enjoy unlimited access to every newsletter, podcast episode, and exclusive archive—all seamlessly available in your favourite podcast apps.
Join the conversation that matters – Be part of our vibrant community with full commenting privileges on all content, directly supporting Mencari's
Stay with readmencari.com for continuous updates on these developing stories and more from across Australia, New Zealand, and the globe. Subscribe to our newsletter for daily briefings delivered straight to your inbox!
Got a News Tip?
Contact our editor via Proton Mail encrypted, X Direct Message, LinkedIn, or email. You can securely message him on Signal by using his username, Miko Santos.
🛑 More on Kangaroofern Media Lab
Read our last AU Politics newsletter : Bendigo Bank Axes 158 Roles
Read our last AI newsletter : Anthropic Raises $13B Series F
Read our last Tech newsletter : Australian Court Rules Apple
Read our last Podcast newsletter : Spanish podcast listeners seek more Latino cultural content:YouTube Unveils AI Podcasting Tools
