The shock expressed at the amorality of PricewaterhouseCoopers’ brazen misuse of confidential Government information is understandable and overdue. Not just overdue because the initial breach of confidentiality took place in 2013 and was detected by the ATO in 2016, but because the sky-rocketing use of consultants in the Australian Public Service (APS) since the election of the Abbott Government in 2013 made such a scandal inevitable.
One of the attractions of paying outside consultants for advice is that, to ensure repeat business, they tend to tell you what they think you want to hear. Whether in auditing or consulting, the notion that anyone can buy genuinely independent advice is a delusion.
Somehow or other, the “smaller government” policies of recent decades have left many businesses believing they are no longer required to obey the law.
Source: PwC Scandal: Accountants used to be boring, then the government asked them to do its job
olddogthoughts 