Anthony Albanese says it is “appropriate” charges have been laid after two EY graduates were sacked for allegedly accessing the Prime Minister’s personal banking information.
Mr Albanese on Wednesday refused to “go into the detail” because the case is before court but said it was “a serious issue”.
“Accessing anyone’s privacy, any Australian’s privacy is alarming, let alone someone from a contractor who’s not an employee of Commonwealth Bank being able to access that information,” he told the ABC’s News Breakfast.
He said his government would “continue to examine” the conduct of major consulting firms, such as EY.
“The behaviour of some of these big accounting firms has been completely unacceptable,” Mr Albanese said.
“In some cases, it has involved breaches of the law, and they need to be held to account, if you’ll excuse the pun, because they simply have engaged in behaviour that’s not consistent with Australian law or consistent with the way that people would expect big corporations to operate.”
Phillip Issa, 25, and Paul Issa, 21, allegedly accessed restricted personal banking data belonging to a federal parliamentarian, according to an Australian Federal Police spokesperson.
They were both charged with one count of unauthorised access/modification of restricted data, with court documents seen by NewsWire alleging they knew “the access was unauthorised”.
Mr Issa was also hit with an additional charge of using a carriage service to publish the personal data of one or more persons that a reasonable person would find menacing or harassing.
It’s understood one of the men is a former employee at EY, while the other has never worked at the company.
It is unclear which of the men formerly worked at the accounting firm.
EY has declined to comment.
Their matters were briefly mentioned in the Downing Centre Local Court on Tuesday when an adjournment was made to August 25.
The pair will remain on bail.
