This entire episode has been deeply troubling, and the evidence that we've heard in the course of the day has only served to deepen our concern. We think there has been an egregious and serious breach of trust that contravenes some of the most basic tenets of integrity and honesty in this profession, and there are a couple of points I want to make about that, if you can bear with me. I know it's late in the day.

Firstly, the relationship of trust between an auditor and the companies it is auditing is critical. It goes to the heart of integrity in our financial system. A company has to be able to make itself vulnerable to its auditor and have the confidence in its auditor to fully expose its books, records and extensive commercial-in-confidence information, and the integrity of our markets depends on the disclosure. The misuse of confidential information by an auditor in the way that you've just outlined, Ms Lawrence, is a breach of trust. It goes to the heart of the professional obligations of an auditor, and high-quality independent audit is critical to market integrity and to informed investor decision-making. That is why we think this is so serious.

The second point I want to make is that there are, in our view, clear gaps in the regulatory settings. Our jurisdiction in relation to audit firms as opposed to individual auditors, as we have discussed on several occasions, is extremely limited. We can only investigate individual registered company auditors within the partnership, and only then in relation to their conduct of an audit. We have long called for reform in this area, and we remain firmly of the view that the jurisdiction of the Corporations Act needs to extend to deal with big partnerships in the way we've been talking about today. We also think that the sanctions applicable to breaches need to be significantly increased.

We also consider the current whistleblower protections to be deficient. They need to be extended so that those that are seeking to make disclosures in relation to the conduct of partnerships such as KPMG are clearly protected. In relation to the governance of audit firms, a related observation is that we find efforts to include some company-type governance oversights to partnership models—and we've heard evidence about that today—does not provide any meaningful check or oversight of actions by the leadership of accounting firms.

Coming now to your question, Ms Lawrence, in relation to the matters, we have formal investigations underway in relation to the conduct of individual registered company auditors within KPMG, relating to two distinct issues. The first involves the potential misuse of Lendlease confidential information, and the second involves the misuse, or the alleged misuse, of Optus confidential information. Both of those are now formal investigations, and we have had extensive engagement with KPMG in relation to those issues.

The final point I want to make is that this committee has heard extensive evidence today in relation to privilege claims. We recognise this is a fundamental right of parties. However, the committee's experience in trying to get to the bottom of what has gone on here reflects our very regular experience in undertaking investigations into issues of this kind. It poses a constant challenge for regulators and, while we do challenge it regularly, it is resource intensive, it detracts from our other work and it significantly contributes to delay in our investigations.