Anthony Albanese (Grayndler, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Melbourne for his question, and I certainly agree with him that the breaches in confidentiality by PwC are an absolute scandal. It is deeply troubling. I am sure that anyone who has looked at the details that have been revealed for those events that occurred back in 2018 and around then when PwC was giving advice to the then government on multinational tax changes finds these revelations shocking. The Treasury has already referred the matter to the Australian Federal Police, so it's gone well beyond the step that the member suggests there.

The PwC breach did not arise as a result of an active procurement or Commonwealth contract. The Department of Finance has already taken a number of actions under the Commonwealth procurement framework to strengthen our systems following the disclosure of the PwC emails. These include PwC being directed to stand down employees who were involved in or had knowledge of the tax matters from government contracts until the Switkowski investigation is completed and the department is satisfied that the direction can be lifted. New clauses will be included in the standard government procurement contracts to further strengthen the ability of the government to cancel these contracts in response to such behaviour in the future. Secretaries have been reminded that ethical behaviour must be taken into account as part of the value-for-money assessments which underpin decisions under the procurement framework. The government reserves the right to consider further changes if they are required.

I'll conclude with this point to the member for Melbourne. One of the things that this government spoke about before being elected was the reduction in the capacity of the Public Service to give that frank and fearless advice which is so required and the increasing use of contractors. In the most recent budget, we committed to further conversions of third-party workers—that is, not Public Service—to Public Service employment directly for critical jobs, including in Defence, Agriculture, Veterans' Affairs and the ATO. The context in which we made those commitments was certainly not around this. I am certain that members of the then government weren't aware of these details either. These revelations are indeed shocking, but they do point towards a policy failure as well as— (Time expired)

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