Reserve Bank boss Philip Lowe has confirmed the central bank has underpaid staff, revealing embattled consultancy PwC was hired to help fix the problem.
Appearing at Senate estimates on Wednesday, Dr Lowe said errors in paying entitlements led to an unspecified number of RBA employees being underpaid as much as several thousand dollars.
Experts at PwC, the accounting and consultancy giant embroiled in a tax dodging scandal, were brought in late last year to help the RBA sort out repayments under a contract valued at $300,000-$400,000.
The RBA has also used PwC’s auditing and risk management services, which Dr Lowe said would continue because axing it would be too costly.
Both contracts were negotiated before it emerged PwC partners used confidential government information to help corporate clients dodge tax.
Dr Lowe said the RBA wouldn’t sign further contracts with PwC until those responsible were held accountable and the firm demonstrated “complete transparency” about the scandal, calling the behaviour “unacceptable”.
“The use of private information for this sort of commercial gain is wrong, it destroys trust,” Dr Lowe said.
He said he was “100 per cent” confident that PwC officials had no access to information about monetary policy and interest rate decisions.
Underpayments at the RBA were first revealed in April when the RBA apologised in an internal email to staff for errors in providing staff with cash payouts of their entitlements when they left the bank.
Dr Lowe said on Wednesday that repayments would be forthcoming and that a public report on the underpayments would be published in a month.
He declined to specify how many workers had been underpaid or the total repayment bill. But he said it was much higher than the value of PwC’s contract.
Also on Wednesday, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said her department had a handful of PwC contracts. She has asked for “strict controls” as the tax scandal unfolds.
Ms Plibersek said once the story broke, checking what involvement the environment department had with PwC was one of the first things she did.
“We do have a small number of small value contracts,” she told ABC radio.
“I’ve asked the secretary of the department to meet with PwC and make sure that there are strict controls around those contracts to ensure that they’re being done in an ethical way.”
Ms Plibersek took aim at the Coalition for its broad use of consultants while it was in government.
“They spent $21 billion on outsourcing work that could have more properly been done by public servants in my own department,” she said.
Opposition finance spokeswoman Jane Hume defended the use of consultants under the previous government.
“The Commonwealth can’t do everything on its own,” she said.
“There will always be opportunities or necessity to appoint contracts with the big consultants or other experts in the field.”
-with AAP
