{"id":746573,"date":"2026-06-19T11:39:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T11:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/746573\/"},"modified":"2026-06-19T11:39:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T11:39:12","slug":"australia-news-live-us-iran-peace-deal-criticism-lashed-by-jd-vance-kpmg-hearing-begins-today-ukraine-drone-attack-on-moscow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/746573\/","title":{"rendered":"Australia news LIVE: US-Iran peace deal criticism lashed by JD Vance; KPMG hearing begins today; Ukraine drone attack on Moscow"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Former KPMG director Mike Baird has admitted the accounting giant\u2019s independent directors were initially too trusting of how the firm presented explosive whistleblower claims to the board, and says the company\u2019s response lacked urgency.<\/p>\n<p>The former NSW premier, who served as an independent director at the consulting firm from 2022 until September last year, also criticised KPMG\u2019s controversial use of a legal defence to keep details from a Senate inquiry where he <a class=\"inline-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.smh.com.au\/business\/companies\/watch-live-kpmg-clients-and-associates-face-senate-questioning-20260618-p6083v.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">gave evidence today<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Former independent KPMG director Mike Baird says the company was too slow to respond to the allegations.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/ac65968291ab23dd9a20436f6b62bc50e2fccf2f.jpeg\"  class=\"sc-d34e428-1 ldCIuB\"\/>Former independent KPMG director Mike Baird says the company was too slow to respond to the allegations.AAP<\/p>\n<p>Baird was blunt in expressing his unhappiness with how KPMG responded to whistleblower\u2019s complaint, which has thrown the consulting giant into turmoil and led to the resignation of its most senior executives and the loss of business from major clients.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAs you\u2019ll see in my letter, I was also unhappy with the progress on the whistleblower claims, and my request was that, well, pursuing the external investigation had been secured before I resigned, and that was important to me,\u201d Baird told the hearing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former KPMG director Mike Baird has admitted the accounting giant\u2019s independent directors were initially too trusting of how&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":746574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-746573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/746574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}