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Labor senator Deborah O’Neill sent a shockwave across the country with her bombshell revelations of the conduct at accounting/consulting giant KPMG – and it has even led some to call for her elevation to a higher office.
“Deb should be a cabinet minister, in my view. And I’d say to the prime minister, happy to put it on public record, make this woman a cabinet minister because she’s formidable. She’s a force of nature. She’s got a very strong moral compass. She’s very thorough, and she’s very collegiate.”
This praise did not come from an anonymous factional source within the ALP jockeying for favour.
It was the Liberal National Party Queensland senator Paul Scarr.
He was singing her praises, having shared the star chamber atmosphere of the public hearings that have forensically torn apart the leadership of the global consulting giant – and other groups associated the scandal such as law firms and the accounting peak body – with ferocity, humour and a tight-knit kinship among political rivals.
The common cause of exposing the corporate wrongdoing is in sharp contrast to the growing political divide in Canberra as One Nation’s ascendancy – it is the one party not represented on the committee – upsets the traditional political order.
At the June hearings, O’Neill, the committee chair, praised her colleagues, including Scarr, Greens senator Barbara Pocock, deputy chair and Liberal National Party MP Scott Buchholz, Liberal senator Dave Sharma and Labor senator Tania Lawrence.
“I am so pleased to be sitting here with my colleagues today and undertake this work in the national interest,” she said at the June hearings.
The last two words are a point that O’Neill emphasises when it comes to what makes this committee click.
“We share a view of what our role is as parliamentarians and what voters expect us to do, in their interests,” she says in an interview.
“I think it restores hope in the democratic project that people are able to see us working together for them as parliamentarians.”
The parliamentary hearings have uncovered cases of ethical breaches by some KPMG executives, and it would appear these occurred in the pursuit of profit. In contrast, the public interest is the only upside for many of the politicians on the committee, despite the incredible capabilities and work ethic on display.
O’Neill was forced to fight for her job in 2021 in an internal factional tussle with Kristina Keneally for top spot on Labor’s Senate ticket.
Scarr, a Liberal moderate, seems unlikely to find favour in a climate where One Nation poses an existential threat.
