The humiliation of KPMG’s lawyers is almost complete

August 12, 2026 — 5:00am

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Most companies at risk of being dragged into a corporate scandal will do anything to get out of the blast zone. They’ll spin, distract and turn on each other. Just ask KPMG. In 2023 its chief executive Andrew Yates said the decision by staff at his rival, PwC, to leak details of a confidential Australian government tax crackdown was “clearly unethical and unacceptable”. He would’ve handled the matter very differently.

But now that KPMG is in the crosshairs over its own misuse of confidential information, the consulting firm’s lawyers at Allens and Ashurst are taking a different tack. Despite turning in laughably limited reviews on KPMG’s instruction that the firm then presented as thorough investigations, the lawyers are staying loyal to their client.

They had their chance to go their own way in June, at a parliamentary hearing that gave them full legal protection to tip a bucket on their client. Back then, Labor MP Tania Lawrence said Ashurst’s lawyers were “being thrown under the bus” by KPMG and used as a shield for the firm’s “incompetence”.

Did the lawyers want to challenge that, she wondered? In short, no. “It’s not for me” to criticise KPMG, said Lea Constantine, a partner at Ashurst. She and her colleagues at........

© The Sydney Morning Herald