One way to get yourself out of bed with animated indignation on a weekend is to open your kid’s Ipad and try and glean some news, to find a lead story like the below opening the innings.
In this case the lead story of our news piece is about PwC. They are in the public perception sin bin for assisting in the harvesting of millions (or is it billions) of Australian taxpayers dollars using information gained from the ATO, then doling that information out to corporates in the form of ‘do this and you will pay less tax’ advice. PwC have decided to hand some back, related to fees for services relating to Robodebt.
Like much of the corporate world, they pay a lot for brand perception management advice. Late this week those tips would have identified that former PM Scott Morrison and other Ministers from his government were even more on the public nose courtesy of the findings of the Robodebt Royal Commission. And the response from PwC is?
‘We can slip the government 850 grand that we milked the government for in providing a Powerpoint presentation, to demonstrate our regret at some of our past behaviour, and buoy the PR vibe.’
So for those wondering about the depths of regret being experienced by someone at PwC about their involvement with anything now in the public domain consider the following.
In the 3 years of Morrison government – so that is 2019 to 2022 – PwC accumulated revenues of just over $704 million from Federal Government contracts according to the Austender site. The same site tells us that ABN 20 607 773 295 (PwC or PricewaterhouseCoopers, and a range of similar names) received contracts worth more than $1 Billion from 2011 to today. That is without looking at whatever other little reporting dodges are out there (and there will be plenty) on either side of the contract to avoid public disclosure.
Macrobusiness Members and all Australians shelled out to PwC over the life of the Morrison Government for Federal Government contracts. We can be 100% certain that they harvested considerably more through all sorts of State and Local government contracts to go with that.
PwC’s Commonwealth Public Service contracts over 12 years.
So when PwC comes out with something along the lines, as reported by NineFax:
“Following the findings of the royal commission review into the robo-debt scheme, we do not feel it would be appropriate to retain the $853,859 fee for work carried out for the DHS on this matter,” she said in a statement. “We have made representations with the minister’s office and will take the necessary steps for these fees to be returned.”
Remind yourselves that the returned fees are less than a rounding error of the Commonwealth Government related take by PwC over the recent past.
The other thing to bear in mind is that the $850k being returned to government coffers is less than the current annual income being chalked up by Kathryn Campbell.
Campbell was the senior Public Servant advising ScoMo and the boys when they foisted Robodebt on the nation. She headed up an executive which has been rightly excoriated by the Royal Commission for its complete spinelessness in standing firm for the rights of Australians to expect public services to be lawful.
Kathryn is somewhere advising someone about buying submarines and is believed to be on a contract worth more than $900k per annum.
And your mainstream media thinks the PwC repayment is big news, unquestioned.