In the hours before KPMG Australia went public with news that its chairman Martin Sheppard would head for the door, David Luff, the former media adviser to John Howard and veteran crisis communications consultant, was working the phones.
Our best bet is Luff had probably hoped the bloodletting came sooner – after all, he’s had plenty of practice. Since Howard, Luff has gone on to work with all manner of major companies, including Telstra, Rio Tinto, Optus, and Nine Entertainment, owner of this masthead.
Now he’s one of the people trying to pull KPMG out of a months-long nosedive.
The latest of those efforts came on Tuesday, when it announced that Sheppard would head for the door, to be replaced by an independent chairman. It also said the firm would do a bunch of stuff to learn from its mistakes so as to never make them again. Two other senior partners, Paul Rogers and former chief operating officer Eileen Hoggett, will also leave the partnership.
There were not one but two external reviews announced as part of the latest house-clearing: The first, KPMG said in its announcement, would look at the firm’s whistleblowing system and the “broader cultural context” that affects effective whistleblowing.
That review will be run by Principia Advisory, a UK firm that KPMG Australia has previously worked with, and which in a 2024 “Ethics Study” bragged about KPMG Australia adopting its “Ethical Culture Index” to monitor the – wait for it – “health of ethical culture” and track “culture change initiatives”. But we’re sure this review will be thorough!
The second review will look at how KPMG is learning from its mistakes and will be run by a firm that has not yet been engaged. This is all part of KPMG Australia’s three-part action plan, which, along with the leadership changes, CBD hears was briefed out in a partnership meeting in Melbourne on Tuesday, while journalists were holding off publishing the news until 11.30am.
Late last month, Sheppard accepted the resignations of KPMG Australia’s former chief Andrew Yates and audit head Julian McPherson after the firm confirmed allegations that confidential client data had been shared and potentially used to win new business with other clients. But Sheppard had for months resisted pressure to take personal accountability for the firm’s delay in confronting the scandal. That is, until now.
Word is the partners were incredulous it’s taken this long. And it’s hard to blame them – this is the firm that has been getting seasoned crisis advice all along. So we’d wager Luffy probably wasn’t pleased either.
Paul Barry’s day in court
The high-profile former host of the ABC’s Media Watch Paul Barry spent more than a decade taking aim at some of the worst that Australian journalism had to offer. So we were a touch amused to hear on Tuesday morning that the watchdog recently had his own minor brush with the law.
The erstwhile ABC host represented himself in Waverley court on Tuesday, after he was booked for parking within 10 metres of an intersection with no traffic lights. But it sounds like the judge was sympathetic because the case was dismissed without a conviction.
“I was booked for parking outside my garage on a Sunday morning in a quiet laneway. I’ve been parking there for 16 years and no one has ever told me it was illegal,” Barry told CBD.
“There are no ‘No Parking’ signs and the car was not obstructing anybody’s view, so there was no safety issue. I thought the penalty of $400 and two penalty points was pretty extreme. Most speeding fines are less. And I also thought the rangers might have given me a warning.”
Labor gets cute with gallery photographers
It was always going to be a big day for Tammy Tyrrell on Tuesday, who last month announced that she’d joined the Labor Party after defecting from the Jacqui Lambie Network.
As a result, Tyrrell’s attendance at the Labor party room meeting was going to be a picture-worthy moment. But not so if you’re the Prime Minister’s Office, which CBD hears told the parliamentary press gallery’s photographers that only one of them would be allowed in the room, and they’d have to treat it as a pool event, an arrangement that would usually see a media outlet provide lines and images for others where space is limited, like, say, on a helicopter, or in a tight room.
Safe to say the Labor party room isn’t quite that tiny, evidenced by the fact that the party was able to make space for staffers probably given the task of posting their own lame photos to social media. We’re told that the press photographers ultimately said none of them would go in unless they all could, and they all ended up putting down their cameras in solidarity.
We tried to ask the PMO about it, but we didn’t hear back.
Scott Farquhar’s morning ride
Atlassian co-founder Scott Farquhar has plenty of time on his hands these days.
Since stepping down as co-chief executive of Atlassian in 2024, Farquhar has been serving as chairman of the Tech Council of Australia, through which he mainly lobbies the Albanese government to continue taking a hands-off approach to regulating AI in Australia.
The Point Piper resident has been spending his newfound downtime out and about. The billionaire was seen riding his bicycle down New South Head Road in Double Bay on Tuesday morning, according to a CBD spy, headed towards Double Bay shops. Apparently, this wasn’t the first time Farquhar has been seen riding down the main road either.
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John Buckley is a CBD columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.
Fiona Byrne is the CBD columnist for The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.From our partners
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