“The most egregious tactics to kill the revelations of corporate wrongdoing have been recently revealed by investigative reporter Adele Ferguson,” writes “The Gadfly” columnist ROBERT MACKLIN.  

EVERY time a big scandal breaks my dear wife rejoices: “It just goes to show how lucky we are to have a free press,” she says. 

Well, maybe…

The recent revelation that PwC, one of the big four consulting firms, had leaked its insider knowledge of new tax arrangements to its private clients and shovelled the payoff into their back pockets, was a case in point.

She was only half right. The scam revealed by the Nine group’s “Financial Review” was a coup for Australia’s free press. And for a couple of weeks it became a cause célèbre. 

But then what? A formal mea culpa from some executive in a suit, the sale of part of the company, a toothless inquiry and a government assertion that the APS will do more specialist research and development currently outsourced.

However, not much has changed, and nor is it likely to. We had hoped that the return of a new government might wipe the slate clean. Instead, like governments and corporations I have known since those ancient days when I was John McEwen’s press secretary, secrecy is the perennial watchword.

Admittedly, it reached a nadir under Scott Morrison and his five secret ministries. And the eponymous A-G Dreyfus did drop the persecution of Bernard Collaery. But the trial of David McBride is a damned disgrace. 

So, too, is the shocking ordeal suffered by the journalists Nick McKenzie and Chis Masters that is still playing out after years of the defamation suit brought by the disgraced SAS operative Ben Roberts-Smith. Masters, whom I count as a friend, remains under enormous pressure from associates of Roberts-Smith, whose case was backed by the VC fanatic, Kerry Stokes. 

Masters has an unblemished reputation for the highest integrity. He was supportive of my own revelation – the secret trial and jailing of the man I designated “Witness J” – after I breached a tangle of attempted secrecy and attended an obscure court hearing. That led to the publication of his fate in our own “CityNews”.

At the time, Masters and I had been entrusted by the Defence Department and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) to undertake case studies of major defence procurements. The plan was to develop a compendium of studies – without fear or favour – to show procurement newcomers the potholes to avoid. Nice idea… until the potholed participants objected. 

But the most egregious tactics to kill the revelations of corporate wrongdoing have been recently revealed by investigative reporter Adele Ferguson. 

Her backgrounder made a single appearance on the ABC newsfeed in late 2023 before being removed to the “archive” file.

It covers 10 pages of utter bastardry by the Commonwealth Bank to kill its shocking secrets from the reporter via whistleblower Jeff Morris. 

“Over 12 months, the bank’s PR machine was on a mission to deny, deflect and discredit the stories by constantly attacking the articles and me,” she says. 

One phone call, “was from a PR officer for a big legal firm asking if I’d been ringing some of his clients. I hadn’t. But somebody had and they’d been impersonating me.

“Smear campaigns, intimidation, threats, fake identities and surveillance – this is not how you would expect blue-chip companies to behave when their reputations are threatened. 

“But all these tactics were employed by the Commonwealth Bank to shut down a scandal that exposed forgery, fraud and a cover up that culminated in a royal commission into the entire financial services industry.”

No doubt in 2024 the battle will continue, and we’ll all celebrate when the occasional scandal hits the pages of our news outlets big and small. 

My dear wife might be right – we’re certainly better than many countries. But for every felonious scheme exposed, you can bet there’s half a dozen burrowing away beyond our sight – no matter who occupies the Treasury benches, the glittering boardrooms… or the stratospheric Defence budget.

robert@robertmacklin.com