“Yes or No”: The Accountability Trap Politicians Set for Others
‘Yes or no!’ ‘Don’t play with me here.’ ‘Please answer my question.’ ‘Just answer this question.’ ‘We need the truth.’ ‘Can you answer the question please?’ ‘It’s a simple question.’ ‘You still haven’t answered my question.’
For several hours on 19 June 2026, parliamentarians serving on the Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services subjected current and former KPMG executives to scrutiny.
The Committee was examining allegations arising from disclosures made by a KPMG whistleblower. The hearing was uncomfortable and excruciatingly painful viewing. The spectacle was expected.
The questioning was relentless. Many types of elicitation and provocation methods were deployed: open questions, leading questions, loaded questions, rhetorical questions, inimical hypotheticals and preferential treatment exposures.
Committee members dissected answers with clinical precision. They demanded precision and clarification. The careful selection of words by KPMG executives was examined and replacement words of a caustic character were suggested. They challenged qualifications and caveats. They pressed the KPMG witnesses who appeared reluctant to answer directly.
They were not going to accept rejections. More than once, they insisted upon a simple ‘yes or no’ response. At other times, Committee members interrupted. At times they displayed visible frustration with answers they regarded as incomplete, evasive or unresponsive. The KPMG witnesses were pressed repeatedly to respond directly to the question asked.
The unmistakable commitment to accountability displayed by the Committee members on 19 June 2026 is not exceptional. Similar vigour can be observed in other parliamentary inquiries at home, and in select overseas legislatures where committee scrutiny takes on an equally exacting form. One need only look across the landscape in New Zealand and the United States to see a replica of the portrait: the same insistence on precision, and the same intolerance for evasion.
The Committee’s performance, at least in this instance and assuredly in all instances, would almost make the voter proud; the election of such tenacious and inquisitorial parliamentarians holding witnesses to account, despite the occasional distractions from Committee members ranging from the unprofessional to the pettifogging.
However, it was difficult not to be struck by a feature that may have eluded spectators, commentators and reporters who were too intently—and rightly so—focused on the day’s nadir and apogee, and less attuned to the wider dynamic at play.
It is tolerably clear from proceedings of various parliamentary committees that politicians know exactly how an elusive witness acts and what an evasive answer looks like.
Not speculatively. Not approximately. Not probably. Not theoretically. Not as an abstract proposition discussed in a political science textbook. Not in the incubator of a lecture theatre. They recognise it instantly.
The moment a witness begins to wander from the question, politicians notice. The moment a witness seeks refuge in irrelevancies, politicians notice. The moment a witness attempts to answer a different question from the one asked, politicians notice.
They will have none of it, and they rightly object. Attempts at correction are instant, although oftentimes accompanied by theatre.
The KPMG committee hearing—which we may assume to be generally representative of all hearings of committees—demonstrated that politicians possess a highly developed understanding of accountability. They know that meaningful scrutiny requires witnesses to engage inextricably with the question. They know that accountability is undermined when answers become elusive, evasive or equivocative. They know that a person in a position of power should not be permitted to escape examination through clever wordplay or strategic diversion. The theatricality of exposing such tactics is breathtaking.
Yet there is an unforgettable and unforgivable irony at the heart of all this. Parliamentary committees, comprised entirely of parliamentarians, approach their watchdog role characteristically uninhibited by the ‘unclean hands’ doctrine.
While not attempting in any way to engender sympathy for KPMG, many of the parliamentarians who demand direct answers from corporate executives themselves routinely resort to the same forms of evasion when placed under scrutiny by journalists and voters.
How often have we watched a minister refuse to answer a straightforward question? How often have we heard a politician respond to a query with a rehearsed talking point that bears little relation to what was asked? How often have we seen repeated attempts to change the subject, attack the premise of the question or simply consume the available time without providing a meaningful response? The answer, of course, is frequently, if not always. For those preferring quantitative evidence, there are legions of academic studies showing chronic evasion by politicians.
They demand compliance or obedience from witnesses in committees, as much as they engage in evasion of their own in television studios. The contrast is impossible to ignore.
One defence offered by politicians is that government is different. Public issues are complex. Questions cannot always be reduced to a simple ‘yes or no’ answer. Direct answers are impractical, unrealistic or inconsistent with the realities of public life. Context matters. But those features are also writ large within corporate Australia in equal measure. Yet the politicians only are permitted to play the game.
The Committee hearing also exposed a deeper inconsistency.
Parliamentarians are among the fiercest defenders of parliamentary privilege. They regard it as fundamental to democratic government. They insist it protects institutional interests that transcend the interests of individual members. They would rightly resist any suggestion that Parliament should waive its privilege (although waiver might be legally unachievable) simply because outsiders are resolved to questioning proceedings of Parliament outside of Parliament.
Yet when confronted with a claim for legal professional privilege which is often claimed by corporations, calm seas turn choppy.
During the KPMG hearing, enormous pressure was brought to bear upon KPMG to waive privilege. It is one thing to claim legal professional privilege incorrectly. To demand waiver of a properly claimed privilege is quite another. In any case, the message was clear: transparency required disclosure. Public confidence required disclosure. Accountability required disclosure.
Perhaps it did. Perhaps it did not. And yes, the privileges are different. That is not the point. The poignant question is whether the principle is being applied consistently.
Privileges are not tested when the protected information is trivial, but when the information is important, controversial and highly sought after. The true measure of commitment to a privilege is whether one respects it when disregarding it would be politically convenient.
When the privilege belongs to Parliament, it is treated as sacred. When the privilege belongs to somebody else, it transmogrifies into an obstacle to transparency.
This is not an argument for shielding misconduct. Nor is it a defence of KPMG. It is an observation about accountability, and the double standards politicians apply to it.
Watching the hearing, one wonders what might be achieved if ordinary hapless voters and the media possessed similar powers. For the media to be empowered to summon a politician to remain seated for hours while every inconsistency is explored and every qualification examined. It is a Panglossian wonder that will remain in the realm of fairytales. We the people are forever left writing letters, signing petitions, campaigning, protesting and lodging freedom of information requests. Ultimately, we the people are complicit for we have permitted this hypocrisy to live and thrive.
Nilay B. Patel is a lawyer based in Melbourne
