Auditors without professional borders

A number of these accounting firms are paid by the state government to provide financial advice and research. Yet much of this research is couched in terms the government of the day wants to hear.

Adelaide's media is littered with reports of highly variable worth by accountancy firms. Most of these reports are PR and marketing exercises.

There is scant mention of exposing bias, fraud and tax evasion and the risks these pose to the economy. In fact, it's hard to ascertain that they were produced by companies dedicated to accounting.

'Eye of the tiger'

Let's travel back in time to 1989. At a large hotel in Dallas, Texas, Jim Edwards, the new head of Arthur Andersen's audit division, walked on stage to the sound of the Survivor's song, 'Eye of the Tiger'blaring over the PA - followed by a tethered snarling, live tiger.

Edwards told his employees they, "require the eyes of a tiger, eyes that seize opportunities, eyes that are focused on the kill."

Arthur Andersen was one of greatest (and most conservative) accounting firms in the world. But in the 1980s, it's corporate culture changed. It morphed from a wise old owl in to a profit-hungry carnivore.

It shackled its fortunes to Enron, a high-flying energy trading company, which undervalued debt while reporting absurdly high profits.

Enron's fall in 2001 took its primary auditing company, Arthur Andersen, with it. It was woefully negligent of its client's true financial position.

Arthur Andersen was found guilty of obstruction of justice, as it had shredded Enron audit documents. Why didn't the auditors hit the alarm button?

As the American writer Upton Sinclair wrote in the 1930s, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."

In the lead-up to the GFC in 2008, Lehman Brothers bank had borrowed eye-watering amounts of money to fund its investments in housing-related assets. When the American property market crashed, so did Lehman.