‘How can we trust them?’: The question that could break KPMG

As the man who built Bunnings into an Australian icon, John Gillam knows his way around a tool shop. At Parliament House, he took the sledgehammer to KPMG’s smouldering reputation by asking one simple question: how can we trust this firm again? Gillam is now chairman of Lendlease, the property giant at the heart of this KPMG mess. It was confidential documents from inside Lendlease that KPMG partners used to develop their pitches for other audit contracts, including at Westpac and Dexus, in a breach of client trust that has sparked the biggest crisis in KPMG Australia’s history.