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Ian Trust (Executive Chair, Wunan) and Adam Baylis (KPMG secondee),
East Kimberley, 2011.
Photo: Daniel Linnet, Linnet Foto
KPMG has partnered with Jawun
since 2007, and reached a
milestone in October this year
when it celebrated its 200th
secondee.
Catherine Hunter, Head of
Corporate Citizenship, explained
that from the start, the firm chose
to invest in partnership because it
saw deep alignment between the
two organisations and a key global
aspiration of the firm.
‘As an Australian firm and a
global network we wanted to turn
our minds with our community
investment corporate citizenship
work to address some of the more
intractable big issues from a social
and environmental perspective.
We made a conscious decision
to engage with Indigenous
Australia because we felt that it
was a core issue for us as a nation,
because inequality is most acutely
experienced by Aboriginal and
Torres Strait Islander Australians.’
To bring that intention to life,
Catherine said it was important
to ‘look at what we believe we
stand for as a firm from a values
perspective, and then walking
the talk in terms of what we
tell our clients and the sort of
service offering we provide our
clients and how we work with our
clients. Everyone has their code of
conduct and their values statement
and some of them are really very
similar, but I think the test of that
is not just what a company does
but how it works and operates.
Everything we do with Jawun so
beautifully illustrates that purpose
in a living way.’
KPMG produced a human rights
statement that has changed
and infused many of its policies
and engagement practices with
clients, and in 2014 the firm won
Australia’s prestigious Human
Rights Business Award. While
the firm has been one of Jawun’s
longest-standing partners, its
ongoing alignment is important.
Catherine explains that in
considering its human rights
agenda, KPMG asked the question:
‘How can we contribute to that
global debate by looking at what’s
happening in our own backyard
and really try to demonstrate
best practice? Jawun is very
consistent with the whole notion
because we’ve always worked
with Jawun as the conduit at the
invitation of communities, and with
communities rather than to or for,
and so those principles are really
important to us in terms of how
we engage.’
One of KPMG’s values is
commitment to communities and
that has gathered momentum in
the firm, to the point where this
year KPMG acquired a human
rights consultancy. In the last
12 months KPMG has ‘looked to
identify a global purpose that
unifies us. “Inspiring confidence,
empowering change” is not
something that we will use
externally, but that’s our internal
purpose as an organisation.
If you look at the concept of
Jawun around skills transfer and
capability build to help empower
our communities to self-determine,
the notion of empowerment
is absolutely aligned with our
purpose, and really core to that
human rights based approach that
we’re taking as an organisation.’
CASE STUDY
The corporate ‘why’—KPMG
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