Barbara Pocock

tinyurl.comKPMG ban on government work extended after 'serious ethical failings'The federal government extends its ban on KPMG bidding for new government work until at least the end of February, following allegations its audit partners misused client data then mishandled a whistl...

Department of Finance extended its temporary pause on new KPMG contracts to February 2027. This isn't dealing with the issue. When will Labor show some backbone & call these marauding cowboys to account? When will Labor acknowledge the evidence & ban KPMG? tinyurl.com/mrpp9473

First hearing into social housing has revealed huge HAFF delays: 1,607 social & affordable homes added against the 640,000 households in need. As Labor’s principal response to the worst housing crisis in living memory, Housing Australia has shown itself to be woefully inadequate.

I hate to think what post-war leaders who built Australia’s public housing would've made of this hearing. They met a housing crisis in a much poorer country, in the aftermath of war, amidst big material shortages. Today Labor has many more resources but is failing on every front.

We need a national target of at least 10% public & community housing. The Government needs to directly build houses. We’ve done it before, we can do it again. We need a federal housing department to lead & deliver, not a series of struggling separate silos missing every target.

indailysa.com.auUni drops Santos name from city campus - News | InDaily, Inside South AustraliaAdelaide University has announced a new name for its engineering building, six months after staff and students campaigned for a change.

Thrilled to learn Adelaide Uni will remove Santos’ name from their buildings. While Nepal is still picking up the pieces from devastating, climate-change-induced flooding, there isn’t a building in the world where we should be lauding polluters. www.indailysa.com.au/news/just-in...

The majority of Australians support some form of rent regulation (78%) as well as increased funding for more public housing (75%), new polling from the Australia Institute reveals today. The polling shows Labor’s housing policies are out of step with ordinary Australians.

Labor has done nothing for renters. The HAFF has added just 1,432 social & affordable homes while 640,000 people need housing. Successive govts have neglected investment in public housing & community housing, which has dropped to a record low of 3.7% of all housing stock.

We must protect renters from excessive & unpredictable rent increases by limiting the amount rent can be increased annually. We need a national target of at least 10% of public & community housing as a share of all housing stock. The government needs to build housing again.

The Greens are a party of peace & non-violence. We stand with people in Australia & around the world calling for an end to this genocide. Permanent ceasefire. And end to occupied Palestine. Unconditional aid access. Prosecution of war crimes. An end to the two-way arms trade.

October 11th - NT govt plans to displace ~150 people 100km out from Darwin – risking access to jobs, family, health & community services. Labor must urgently fund Darwin’s Yilli Short Stay Accomm to prevent its closure, as I've written in a letter to relevant govt ministers.

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Australia has a shameful legacy of intergenerational dispossession & dislocation of First Nations peoples from their homes & communities. Current forced relocation policies are a continuation of that legacy. Labor must support vital Aboriginal-controlled services like YiSSA.

This vital Aboriginal-controlled accommodation supports patients undergoing dialysis at the local hospital, DV victim-survivors and people at risk of homelessness. The Commonwealth has a responsibility to intervene to prevent this community being forcibly displaced.

Labor's spend on KPMG has nearly doubled from $32 mil in 2024-25 to $59 mil in 2025-26. Labor has been watching a repeat of scandals & still hasn’t delivered meaningful reform. The temporary month-to-month freeze on KPMG is nothing but a pathetic, tokenistic punishment.

The ANAO’s audit reveals loopholes in the govt’s framework to curb outsourcing core work. Even when targets were in place & apparently ‘met’, government spending still increased. Without controls, it’s tokenism. We need real measures to cut government reliance on outsourcing.

The Greens want a 15% reduction in spending on consultants every year over 5 years. We’ve been calling for this since the 2023 PwC scandal. The Government still refuses to listen. Labor must break up & regulate the Big 4 & increase penalties for bad behaviour & ethical failures.

Stop the chop! Once destroyed, our Parklands will be changed forever and so will our heritage values.

Labor’s 5% deposit scheme conned 1st homebuyers into massive debt & many risk owing the bank. The Greens want big banks to be required to offer low-interest mortgages for 1st homebuyer owner-occupiers so more early repayments go to paying off the loan, not to bank profits.

Our large banks are amongst the most profitable in the world & they've been making money from the financial stress of Australians for too long. It’s time the banks shouldered a fairer share of the costs facing younger generations entering home ownership.

A dozen federal public servants are earning over $1 million a year at the Future Fund Management Agency. We’re not talking about Secretaries who run big government departments but employees. How can the government justify this? What kind of APS work warrants $1 or $1.5 mil?

The Government says it wants to rebuild the public sector yet it is slashing jobs while paying a handful of public servants millions and outsourcing work to big consultancy firms. That’s not how you rebuild the public service. The government is burning up its APS targets.

The Greens-led senate inquiry into intergenerational housing inequity spent 6 months hearing evidence on Australia's housing crisis. Final report, published today, shows dire need for the government to stop shirking responsibility & act. Public housing, rent caps & affordable mortgages.

Housing in Australia has become a vehicle for private wealth accumulation & a primary driver of widening intergenerational wealth inequality. Meanwhile the banks, real estate industry, big developers & investors are winning from the housing crisis. The system needs to change.

The federal government must take responsibility & ensure a roof over everyone's head. Six months of research has resulted in a comprehensive report detailing our way out of this crisis. Public housing, national rent caps & affordable mortgages are a fantastic place to start.

RBA news awful for the millions in mortgage stress. It's punishment for homeowners & profit for the banks already making $$$ on home loans. Tax the 1%, not hard working people. Rates hikes won’t fix the housing crisis but a government that treats housing as a human right will.

We have a system that tackles inflation by suppressing the household income of workers while protecting housing wealth & corporate profits. Until the concentration of wealth in the country is confronted, working people will keep paying the price.

abc.net.auCommunity housing tenants more likely to face eviction threat than those in public housingNew data obtained by the ABC shows social housing tenants in community housing are more likely to face eviction than those who live in public housing.

The federal government has to stop running scared and get back into the business of building homes directly. Public housing is a long term solution to the housing affordability crisis. People deserve to be able to build a life in secure housing. www.abc.net.au/news/2026-09...

16 Sept

Bathla’s collapse is why Australia needs a public developer - not private developers profiteering off a housing crisis. Bathla owes over $3.4 billion to creditors, subcontractors & suppliers, with 14,000 homes in the pipeline. Hundreds of jobs lost. People’s entire savings are on the line.

16 Sept

Private developers are only interested in profit: they cut corners & leave homeowners to foot the bill for poor quality homes. The majors have pushed us into this housing crisis by giving billions of public money to developers, investors & banks as house prices & rents rise.

16 Sept

The Greens want a public housing developer to ensure people’s right to quality homes ahead of developer profits. The govt did it after WWII - they directly built 26% of all homes nationally. A public developer would deliver homes for communities. Homes before profits!

14 Sept

It's a sad day for Whyalla workers with news 600 jobs will be cut. My heart goes out to workers & their families. After years of uncertainty & millions of dollars of public spending it's a tragedy. Workers must receive their entitlements & have enterprise agreements honoured.

14 Sept

Billionaires like Sanjeev Gupta promised the world but failed Whyalla. A government equity investment would ensure direct protection for workers. There should be no more blank cheques for billionaire corporations who fail to deliver for the economy, community or environment.

KPMG holds $437 mil worth of active contracts with Labor - including 28 Defence contracts worth $303.8 mil - despite the fallout over KPMG’s integrity, ethics & leadership failures. Despite all the lessons of the Big 4 scandals Labor’s response has been woefully inadequate.

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Labor needs to stop feeding the beast & get on with reforming a rogue sector. These firms play by their own rules, where ethics fall away at the prospect of money & the government does nothing about it. It’s time to end the gravy train and properly regulate the Big Four.

KPMG has admitted to multiple ethical failures at its most senior levels. Labor must review all current contracts, ban KPMG from future contracts until they've been properly investigated, break up & regulate the Big 4 & increase penalties for bad behaviour & ethical failures.

Why is Defence spending hundreds of millions on a multinational firm that's admitted to sharing confidential information? KPMG can't be trusted with any govt work, let alone matters relating to national security.

9 Sept

Estimates is an exercise in accountability. Australians have a right to know how public money is being spent. Dr Johnson was questioned over major budget blowouts, project delays & contracting practices in the BoM, and when he didn't come prepared to Estimates, was scrutinised.

9 Sept

Selling government secrets isn't a business model. We've seen enough. The TPB needs teeth to crack down on tax advisor misconduct.

Final hearing of the housing inquiry & the results are in - the big 4 banks are big winners in the housing crisis while renters & 1st home buyers lose out. The big 4 made over $30bn in net profit in the last financial year, from mortgages, while many struggle to make repayments.

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The housing system we have, created by successive Labor and coalition governments, was deliberately designed to benefit corporate greed, the banks, property developers and investors, not ordinary people simply trying to get by.

Tax changes alone were never going to cut it. Labor needs to take on corporate greed in the housing market by taxing big corporations, build more public homes like Australia used to, and end grandfathering for wealthy property investors.

At the same time, rent is outpacing wage growth, with many more people renting today than 30 years ago because it takes much longer to save for a deposit.

youtube.comSenate Committee on Intergenerational Housing Inequity | 03/09/2026YouTube video by Australian Parliament House Streaming Portal

2 Sept

Final hearing of the Greens-led Senate inquiry into intergenerational housing inequity today, where I will question, amongst others, the big four banks and the massive profits they are making off the housing crisis. 📺Stream live here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=CFaG...

1 Sept

Australia’s ‘big 4’ consulting firms are out of control. How many more scandals & breaches of confidentiality need to occur before the government bans KPMG from government work? We must break up & regulate the Big 4 & increase penalties for dishonest behaviour & ethical failures.

26 Aug

Just because big tech companies want to move at hyperspeed, doesn’t mean we need to fast track & roll out the red carpet for them. We need to consider very carefully the impact on workers, as well as the mega extraction of our intelligence, knowledge, culture, water and energy.

25 Aug

The next federal election is a long way off and I still have plenty of work to do on housing, securing super for under 18-year-olds, holding KPMG to account and reforming the Big Four firms. I remain committed to continuing my work on climate and environmental justice.

20 Aug

The Greens have secured a second inquiry into Super for Under 18's. Why? Because every year, 530,000 teenage workers are denied $411 million in super just due to age. Labor voted against super for young workers but they can't hide from an inquiry. The Greens won't let this go.

19 Aug

Today, real estate agents are publicly encouraging rich property investors to raise rents by 30%, following a forecast from the big banks earlier this week. The Greens have called for an immediate rent freeze to stop renters from facing a 30% rent increase.

19 Aug

Unlimited rent increases are legal. This ‘forecast’ encourages rich property investors to raise the rents on their properties - despite retaining generous concessions. Without action, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy if investors use tax changes to justify their greed.