By Kishor Napier-Raman and Noel Towell
It’s been 12 years since Graeme Samuel mused that he had “another five to 10 years of useful mental ability”.
Credit: John Shakespeare
But the former Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair, NRL and AFL commissioner, Opera Australia chair, investment banker and corporate strategist-cum-government fixer still has plenty of bite, if his submission to the parliamentary inquiry into the consultancy sector is anything to go by.
The gist of Samuel’s contribution is that he nearly never used consultants in all major pieces of work he conducted over the years for the ACCC, National Competition Council and Commonwealth more generally, believing the work could be done in-house for a fraction of the price.
But there was this time, back in 2017, when he and the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) were reviewing the culture of the Commonwealth Bank and insisted on hiring management consultants Oliver Wyman – a “waste of money,” according to Samuel’s submission.
We asked Oliver Wyman what they made of that, but didn’t hear back.
Among the other highlights of the submissions was PwC’s own “don’t mention the war” reference to its tax leak scandal that got this whole show rolling.
“We acknowledge that there have been a number of recent matters involving our profession attracting significant media coverage, some of which have highlighted historical weaknesses in our own governance and processes and focussed debate on the regulation of the sectors we operate in,” the firm said.
“This has undermined trust in our profession as a whole.”
Indeed.
The fallen consulting giant also assured the cross-party committee that the long-awaited Ziggy Switkowski report into its internal culture would be published in time for footy finals next week.
We also couldn’t go past the contribution of the Society of Law Academics who reckon they see evidence of “masculinity contest culture” in the behaviour at PwC laid bare in the Senate’s report on the tax leaks scandal.
The society explains that the culture “trivialises compliance with codes of conduct, ethical practices, internal institutional controls as well as respect for customers, teamwork, and restraints on the use of devious or manipulative behaviour.”
We’re no experts, but that ticks a lot of boxes for us.
CARE PACKAGE
Staying with consultants for a minute, well before the PwC tax scandal, there was icare, the embattled NSW government workers compensation scheme found to have underpaid injured workers by up to $80 million.
Now, responses to questions on notice from the NSW parliamentary inquiry into consultants leaves us with more detail on the PwC-icare crossover episode nobody needed.
In 2017, three years before the Herald would reveal the scale of the insurer’s troubles, icare gave PwC $423,500 for just a month of work preparing materials for a senior leadership strategy day.
According to a contract released, PwC was to develop four strategy opportunities into “thought pieces” for “robust fact-based discussion,” including “wellness as a market offering,” and the “use of artificial intelligence”.
The planning day sounds like a lot of forced fun – kicking off at 10am, with breaks for lunch, afternoon tea, not to mention the hour-and-a-half for canapes and drinks to close things off. A very serious jaunt.
By 2018, alarm bells were starting to ring about icare’s parlous financial state.
And last year, NSW Treasury still had major concerns about icare’s financial sustainability, even as chief executive Richard Harding got a salary bump that took his pay packet over the $1 million mark. Maybe they should’ve spent less time on canapes.
DONATION DRIVE
As the Voice to parliament campaign enters its business end, the fundraising push from both sides has gone into overdrive. We brought news on Tuesday of the tidy sum that Simon Holmes a Court’s political fundraising behemoth Climate 200 had raised for the Yes campaign.
On Tuesday Labor National Secretary Paul Erickson had an offer he hoped Yes supporters couldn’t refuse; an anonymous donor matching donations dollar for dollar.
Not to be outdone, Erickson’s cross-town rival Liberal Party Federal Director Andrew Hirst was rattling the tin pretty hard too, while claiming the mantle of underdog for his party’s campaign to defeat the proposal.
Hirst had another reason for No voters to part with their hard-earned cash; the prospect of seeing even more of their cause’s big star Jacinta Nampijinpa Price fronting a new TV ad.
It’ll be a while before we know just how much has been spent trying to win the referendum, but take this as a fair warning that you’re going to be hearing even more in the coming weeks from these cashed-up campaigns.
TESLA TEALS
The teals are the political movement of choice for new Tesla adopters in Australia’s wealthiest postcodes. So the only thing which surprised us about Goldstein independent MP Zoe Daniel’s recent disclosure that she’d traded in the Subaru Outback for a shiny new Tesla Model Y was that she didn’t already own an EV.
In fact, it’s fair to say Australia’s political class hasn’t been swept up in the EV revolution. Maybe they’re worried about the end of the weekend, as former PM Scott Morrison once warned might result from the widespread uptake of electric vehicles.
Whatever the reason, just three elected representatives have chosen an EV as their designated taxpayer-funded transport.
And while the teals have been pretty vocal about their support for EVs, Daniel is so far the only one who’s registered one, although Mackellar MP Sophie Scamps has shares in Tesla held via a family trust.
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