27 November 2025

Dear Senator O’Neill,

Ethical Failure and Lack of Accountability at CA ANZ

Regarding your role as Chair of the PJC Inquiry into Ethics and Professional Accountability, I note that the Inquiry cannot meet your stated goals while the peak body charged with enforcing ethical standards—CA ANZ—appears to operate with a disregard for accountability so blatant it would embarrass any profession that claims to serve the public interest.

Submission #63 placed these matters squarely before the PJC. Subsequent court outcomes have intensified the concerns. The submission and appended Open Letter sets out the conduct that is now impossible to ignore.

Your public statements draw a sharp moral line. You have said:

• “This report marks the end of impunity for a sector which has for far too long thrived in darkness.”

• “No one is beyond accountability. The recommendations of this report deliver transparency and accountability.”

But the reality, as described in my submission and in the appended Open Letter, is that senior figures within CA ANZ continue to act with impunity, shielded from scrutiny, funded by member fees, and insulated from the transparency your Inquiry demanded.

CA ANZ’s governance model would attract admiration from any autocrat. Internal accountability mechanisms were shut down by the CA ANZ board without credible explanation and without consequence. When external accountability was sought through the courts, CA ANZ deployed significant member funds—secretly—to prevent judicial scrutiny of conduct that members allege to be inimical to the organisation’s constitutional and ethical purpose.

Members were not told. The public was not told. Transparency was not provided. Accountability was not permitted.

During the PJC Inquiry, CA ANZ rejected opportunities to clarify or correct what it itself acknowledged as being “serious allegations of impropriety on the part of current and former CA ANZ office holders, staff members and auditors.” The approach appeared to be simple: deny everything (including all allegations made by me), disclose nothing, avoid scrutiny, and hope no one insists on lifting the curtain. So far, that strategy has worked. If that is not acting with impunity, the word has lost its meaning.

The Centre for Public Integrity has publicly warned about the influence of Big Four donations on political processes. The Australian Greens pointed to the same risk in the 2020 dissenting report on audit regulation. It was raised with the PJC that CA ANZ is effectively controlled by the Big Four—directly through board roles and indirectly through each Big Four firm having the numbers to effectively control/regulate the exercise of the board’s powers.

No accountability system can function when the regulator is structurally beholden to the entities it is meant to regulate.

I want to believe the Parliament still has leaders who are prepared to act. Leaders who do not look away when the body responsible for enforcing ethical conduct is itself accused of serious governance failure. Leaders willing to make one clear call: that CA ANZ must undergo an independent review equivalent to or better than the review commissioned by CPA Australia when its own governance failings came to light.

The organisations copied here will no doubt form their own view around whether:

• CA ANZ’s current position is untenable

• the conduct brings the accounting profession into disrepute

• the conduct risks reputational damage to Australia’s standing in global markets.

You have rightly said that auditors are the truth-bearers of the financial system, and that lowered standards ultimately injure every Australian with superannuation or investments. That principle does not stop at audit firms. It must extend to the conduct of the peak body that trains auditors and claims to regulate them.

The PJC Final Report contains 40 recommendations. The circumstances outlined here justify an additional one—Proposal 41—ensuring that no entity in the accounting ecosystem remains structurally unregulated or unaccountable.

Yours sincerely,
Gerald Jaworski
[email protected]

PS — NSW Judiciary: Inversion of Justice

As a NSW Senator, you should also be made aware of concerns about how the Supreme Court of NSW has treated the CA ANZ litigation.

The recent judgments of the Supreme Court of NSW appear to endorse a model where individuals accused of serious misconduct can use the victim entity’s own funds to defeat an attempt to hold them to account. The Court treated the alleged wrongdoers’ instructions as the “voice” of the victim corporation—despite clear, long-standing equitable principles (affirmed by Lord Denning and the UK Court of Appeal) requiring that a conflicted board cannot speak for the company when its own conduct is in issue.

The result is a legally sanctioned inversion of justice: the alleged wrongdoers control the purse, the narrative, and the litigation strategy—all funded by the entity they are accused of harming.

This gives rise to a serious miscarriage of justice to the victim corporation and its stakeholders who, in this case, remain largely unaware and unsuspecting of the alleged misplaced trust.

Long-standing fiduciary obligations prohibit directors from placing themselves in a position of conflict, and also from using company resources for improper purposes. Yet those principles have now been sidelined. Lawyers paid with member funds were directed to ensure an outcome that avoided accountability. The legal profession’s ethical obligations appear to have been subordinated to the interests of those alleged to have breached fiduciary duties and who control the purse.

The failure of the judiciary to intervene has created an accountability vacuum. What is occurring in relation to CA ANZ should alarm anyone concerned with the rule of law.

CC

Australian Governor-General

Mr Garth Hamilton MP – PJC Corporations and Financial Service Deputy Chair – Liberal National

Senator Barbara Pocock – PJC Corporations and Financial Service – Australian Greens

CPA Australia

Institute of Public Accountants

International Federation of Accountants

Global Accounting Alliance

International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants

Accounting Professional & Ethical Standards Board

Chartered Accountants Worldwide

Deloitte

EY

KPMG

PwC

CA ANZ

Centre for Public Integrity

Addendum – Open Letter to Chartered Accountants