WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE SHARING?
Peter Nelson
Economist and Fellow Chartered Accountant, as an International Financial Consultant have carried out assignments for all major international donors in many countries.
News today also highlighted in the media and The Guardian mentions PwC failing to name all 53 partners in tax leak scandal would amount to ‘coverup’, Labor senator says where Deborah O’Neill made the warning after the consulting firm claimed to have ‘ringfenced’ its government work.
?This apparently after PWC on one job for government used its information to advise clients on how to handle their tax minimisation.
This seems to have been an admission of guilt from PWC’s part but is still confusing since don’t companies go to top tax firms to advise the best way to LEGALLY minimise their tax? If you pay for advice don’t you expect your adviser to give you the latest up to date information otherwise would they not have become liable for not doing their job? Here there is no suggestion that PWC were sharing ILLEGAL ways of minimising tax so is it not everyone’s right to use the law in order to do so? Hence it could be seen as a little extreme to destroy PWC’s reputation unless what was shared was ILLEGAL ways to avoid tax. Otherwise surely it is allowed to follow the law? Just what was shared we don’t know.
?Labor senator Deborah O’Neill has warned that anything short of PWC?naming all 53 partners involved in the tax advice scandal will be a “continued obfuscation and coverup” after the embattled consulting firm directed nine unnamed partners on leave. This seems like they are being found guilty of something where they might not have know they shouldn’t have known about it being confidential but again, if they were doing their job on providing the best LEGAL tax advice, should they not use that knowledge? Problem is that people suffer while we have no details.
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?O’Neill made the comments to Guardian Australia after PwC claimed to have “ringfenced” its government work and apologised to the public in a bid to stem the damaging fallout from the tax advice scandal but again if the advice shared was legal within tax law, are you not failing in your duty to not disclose? So what in fact is this sharing and use of confidential tax policy information Albanese said was a “terrible indictment” on the company?
PwC has been under pressure since January when?the Australian Financial Review?first reported that the firm’s former head of international tax, Peter Collins, had been deregistered as a tax agent for sharing the confidential information with colleagues. If this had included circulating a specific a government report they had been paid for within PWC, that would be a different matter.
?An earlier instance of a company thrown under a Bus was a Guardian UK story on international consulting company Adam Smith International who employed someone out of the government who then sent around inside information which had government contracts cancelled and took the company years to recover…?
Project Design and Evaluation Specialist
1 年Seems to me, Peter, that you have lost your bearings on the PWC matter. If Ethics is the compass, then Confidentiality is a cardinal point. PWC signed on, then deceived the client (Government) by appropriating information; then passed it around, to chosen partners 'living on the proceeds of malfeasance'. For the Public Good and the National Interest, I hope that AFP can reveal the trails.
Deputy Director and Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Lead Adviser at ECP Katalis for DT Global
1 年Thanks Peter - your articles are always very enlightening and entertaining. I am just finishing Simon Winchester's book Knowing What We Know (2023) - so your articles resonate with me at the moment. His work provides a historical perspective of how human's have acquired, retained and passed on and manipulated knowledge. It is fascinating to understand how this has profoundly changed the way we think and relate to one another - and will continue to do so with the development of AI. I also recently read The Shallows by Nicholas Carr about how social media is affecting the way we think and retain knowledge - but he also provides historical context to put this into perspective. I would recommend both books for those who want to understand the history of knowledge sharing and where we go from here.