New Delhi, June 15 -- CANBERRA - The man at the centre of Australia's most damaging Big Four audit scandal since PwC did not go quietly to the press. He went first to KPMG International, the global umbrella body that sits above the Australian partnership, expecting the kind of structural distance and independence that a whistleblower needs. KPMG International sent him back to the Australian arm he was trying to expose.

it goes to whether the Big Four's global network architecture is designed, at its core, to protect firms or to protect those who find problems inside them.

The Australian government is not waiting for that question to be answered philosophically. The Department of Finance has formally declared the situation a "significant...