4 days ago
Has Finance lost the plot? Perhaps the Audit Office should look at them
It goes without saying that Finance does not appear to see itself as some sort of representative of the victim - the taxpayer - in this process. Finance officers played no role in bringing the scandal to light, nor any zeal even in having PWC thrown out of the consultancy pool. It was Treasury which did that. It "owns" the exclusion by way of senator Katie Gallagher's role as minister, and control over the tender process. Finance has shown no interest in getting the facts out, or even in getting PWC to hand over more documents. The tone of the report is that PWC has suffered enough, but there is no weighing of that "suffering" - trite as it is - compared with the damage to the revenue, trust and confidence in the consultancy system, and perhaps the shattering of the idea that Finance, and its supervision of the Financial Management Act is an important constitutional bulwark of honest government.
