The federal health department is taking a fresh look at contracts worth $25 million with PwC to check on any conflicts of interest.
A Senate estimates committee heard on Friday the department had 12 contracts with the major consultancy firm.
“We are actively engaging with PwC at the moment to identify any of those potential areas (of conflicts),” department secretary Brendan Murphy said.
“They assure us that they have processes to manage these things, but we are going through every one of our contracts.”
The committee heard some of the contracts were entered into this year, after the Tax Practitioners Board took action against former PwC partner Peter Collins over his sharing of confidential government briefings on multinational tax reform with partners and clients.
The Australian Federal Police is investigating the matter.
Health department chief operating officer Charles Wann said aged care contracts were a key focus for the review.
“It does represent one of the higher value contracts that we’ve got in terms of business advisory services,” he said.
“That’s an obvious area where conflict might exist, so we’ve asked some specific questions of PwC around their arrangements and how they’re managing that conflict and whether there have been any issues arisen that needed to be notified.”
He said he expected PwC’s advice by the end of next week.
Mr Wann said part of the consideration of value for taxpayers’ money was ethical conduct.
Any new contracts would be covered by new criteria issued by the finance department, he said.
The ethics and integrity of consulting services will come under the spotlight on Wednesday at the second public hearing of a Senate inquiry which kicked off in March.
It is not yet known whether any PwC representatives will be asked to front the hearing.
The company said in a written submission: “All our people are required to take mandatory training in respect of conflict management and confidentiality, and individually confirm each year that they are aware of our policies, code of conduct and the consequences of breaching them”.
The submission also included an unreserved apology from now-resigned CEO Tom Seymour over the Collins matter.
The firm received an estimated $537 million in contracts from the federal government over the past two years, with the defence department the biggest user of its services.
– AAP
