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The firm was “not considered” to have been in breach of its code of conduct and values in legal documents that reveal the firm was advised that it would not be required to take any further action with respect to the whistleblower’s allegations.
Despite KPMG requesting legal professional privilege over its legal documents produced by Ashurst and Allens, on Monday (10 August), the parliamentary joint committee on corporations and financial services decided to release six legal documents from the firm “on the basis of compelling public interest”.
The six documents include letters of advice, review letters, letters on Allens’ investigation into the whistleblower allegations named “Project Magenta”, the outcome of its review, and Allens’ Final Investigations Report on Project Magenta.
Accounting Times viewed a letter of advice issued to KPMG by Ashurst in mid 2025, which said: “On the basis of the information available to us, we cannot see any proper basis for [redacted] claims that the deed is void or unenforceable.”
“We recommend, however, preparing a communication to [the whistleblower] that sets out KPMG’s perspective on what has occurred and its position – in essence, that it is not trying to ‘silence him’, that it takes his concerns seriously and encourages him to provide (through one of the many avenues available to him) any further relevant details that he has so that it can look into these matters further.”
Later that year, Allens issued a letter of advice to the firm, which said that it did not consider that the steps that KPMG had taken “could be said to breach the protections under the whistleblower laws”.
“There is sufficient basis to conclude that the 30 May disclosure is not a protected disclosure under whistleblower laws because we do not consider that it was not made to an eligible recipient,” the letter said.
Allens said that since the whistleblower’s disclosure was not made to an eligible recipient, it could not qualify for protection under whistleblower laws.
“While we found that none of the allegations the subject of our investigations were substantiated, we have identified conduct in the course of investigating allegation 5 that likely breached KPMG’s terms and conditions with its client and its confidentiality policy,” Allens said in its letter.
Allegation five refers to allegations of inappropriate access to Lendlease documents during a Westpac contract pitch.
Allens’ Final Investigations Report noted that no competitive advantage was derived from sharing the Lendlease documents and that it was not particularly sensitive, “the Lendlease Audit Assessment Criteria Document should not have been shared on screen (or at all) with the Westpac audit tender team”.
“We consider that there is some risk that, in all the circumstances, the use of the information would not properly be regarded as falling squarely within the engagement terms,” Ashurst said in a mid-2025 review letter to the firm, noting that it had “not independently verified the information contained in the investigated response.”
The investigated response document, created by KPMG deputy general counsel James McClelland, sets out responses in relation to each allegation in the whistleblower’s allegations document.
In its 10 August 2026 statement, the committee noted that the processes from the two firms were central to the claim that KPMG had undertaken comprehensive internal and external investigations before Senator Deborah O’Neill’s speech in early 2024.
These documents were provided to the committee on the basis of legal professional privilege on 22 June.
“The committee [notes] that it provided KPMG with every opportunity to publish the documents itself. KPMG has been free to do so. It has chosen not to,” the committee said.
“The publication is necessary to enable the public examination of KPMG’s response to the whistleblower’s serious allegations and KPMG’s characterisation of that response following the speech given by Senator O’Neill.”
A further hearing for the matter will take place on 14 August 2026.
