Treasurer hints at long road back for PwC

As the fallout from the PwC confidentiality breach scandal featured for another day in Senate estimates hearings, Dr Chalmers said the government had already moved to tighten processes around awarding and overseeing contracts to external providers.

The Treasurer also indicated that PwC will likely find it difficult to secure government contracts for the foreseeable future.

"Part of the changes that Katy Gallagher and her Finance department have been talking about is making sure that we take character and past behaviour into consideration when we make new contracts," the Treasurer told ABC's 7.30 Report.

"I think you can read into that what you will."

Dr Chalmers said in most instances department contracting processes were carried out at arms length from politicians but "one of the big priorities here is to make sure that where a company has done the wrong thing in the past that that's taken into consideration into the future".

His comments follow confirmation from the Tax Practitioners Board at an estimates hearing late Wednesday that it has asked PwC to hand over the names of those involved in the breach in which confidential information about proposed international taxation changes were shared with many employees across the firm, both domestically and globally.

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Dr Chalmers expressed deep government anger over the troubled professional services firm's behaviour.

"Ever since I heard about it, I've been ropable about it, as are most people who have thought about it," he said.

"Because what we've got here is a company which took government secrets, provided in good faith in the interests of consultation, and sold that to clients."

The treasurer warned that the steps taken by the government so far, which include referring PwC for investigation by the Australian Federal Police, demanding that no PwC staff under suspicion are involved in current government work and inserting clauses in contracts allowing the government to cancel arrangements in the case of unethical behaviour, may not be the end of government action.

"We've had discussions internal to government, that if we need to do more here, we will do more here because we need to clean it up," he said.

"And we need to give people faith that the processes of government are sufficiently robust to prevent this from happening again."

Greens senator Barbara Pocock has flagged she intends to refer the scandal to the National Anti Corruption Commission for investigation.

But Attorney General Mark Dreyfus told ABC radio it would be up to the NACC, which begins operation on July 1, to decide what it investigates and how it conducts its inquiries.

As deep concern about the actions of PwC continued to swirl within the government and public service, a separate confidentiality breach involving a parliamentary committee has also become a target of ire.

On Wednesday, Reserve Bank of Australia governor Philip Lowe expressed disappointment that details of a confidential briefing to the House Economics Committee last week were leaked to a media outlet.

In an address to parliament on Thursday, the committee's chair, Labour MP Daniel Mulino, condemned the leak as "highly regrettable".

Dr Mulino said the committee determined that the unauthorised disclosure was unlikely to have significant consequences and, because no one admitted to the breach, it did not feel able to determine who was responsible "with any certainty".

But the Labor MP said the "very disappointing" conduct showed a lack of respect for parliament and "undermined trust in our democracy".