James Thompson

It's had several sets of lawyers go over it, and now it sort of admits that the investigation was inadequate.

So KPMG has got to go back to the start and sort of investigate its own investigation.

and try and get to the bottom of how deep this problem goes.

It is very, very disappointing.

And as with PwC, these accounting firms, these professional services firms, they hold themselves up as sort of bastions of good advice, unimpeachable sort of leaders of the community.

And what it says is, nah, sorry, guys, your own governance is crap.

Don't lecture us about

governance anymore and I think that's the reputational damage that KPMG is going to have to take but Anthony if you step back here there's a few allegations that are involved KPMG misused client confidential information it dismissed whistleblower concerns it tried to cover all this up take us back to the start though

How was it supposed to have breached clients' trust in the first place?

You're an old auditor.

How would this have worked?

Not sure.

I mean, there's been advice in front of the government that these accounting firms should split their audit businesses from their non-audit businesses.

The government has sat on those recommendations from a parliamentary committee.

They were bipartisan recommendations, by the way.

I'm not sure where that goes.

I think there'll be more fallout.

As I said, KPMG's really only started the investigation into its own investigation.

History says there's a few heads that roll at the start, and then there's a few more heads that roll as you go through the process.

I don't think we'll be surprised if we see that.