Big Four Consultancies All in Disgrace, Cyborg Cockroaches Can Now Scuba Dive: Asia Pacific Roundup
EY has dismissed two employees after they allegedly accessed Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's bank account details while working on a contract with Commonwealth Bank. The bank itself is saying nothing, which leaves the rather obvious question of how two contractors could waltz into a sitting head of government's financial records completely unanswered.
The timing is awkward for the broader consulting industry. All four of the so-called Big Four firms now have active scandals on Australian soil. KPMG Australia lost its chair after a whistleblower exposed misuse of client data. Deloitte had to refund fees for submitting a report it had quietly part-written with AI. And then there's PwC, whose situation is arguably the most brazen of the lot: the firm was brought in to advise on tax policy, then turned around and used what it learned to help tech companies minimise their tax bills. Quite the portfolio.
South Korea and Australia both eyeing the downside of the tech boom
South Korea posted record monthly exports exceeding $100 billion last week, driven heavily by inflated memory chip prices that have been very good indeed for Samsung and SK Hynix. The OECD promptly rained on that parade, warning in its annual Economic Survey that South Korea's growing reliance on semiconductor exports, while great for growth and tax revenues, also makes the country increasingly vulnerable to external shocks and the kind of boom-bust volatility the chip market is historically fond of.
Australia, meanwhile, is wrestling with a different flavour of tech-driven economic pressure. The Reserve Bank has been debating whether the current datacenter construction surge is feeding inflation, which has remained stubbornly high. Board minutes noted that while datacenters depend heavily on imported components, they also draw on domestic inputs, and the concern is that sustained demand in this sector could pile further pressure onto an already stretched construction workforce and supply chain.
India builds its own Uber
India's government is pushing ahead with Bharat Taxi, a state-backed rideshare platform that takes zero commission from drivers. Home Minister Amit Shah announced it will be running across seven cities by end of July, with expansion to 500 cities planned within the next two years. The service launched last year, framed as a way to boost driver earnings and reduce the country's dependence on foreign platforms.
The government claims private competitors have already started slashing fares to undercut Bharat Taxi before it gains traction, which it describes as an attempt to protect their ability to act arbitrarily once the threat passes. The minister made clear the platform isn't going anywhere.
Amazon in Australian hot water over Prime ads
Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission has filed suit against Amazon, alleging the company breached consumer protection law through unfair contract terms in its Prime subscription. The core complaint: subscribers signed up and paid for an ad-free streaming service, only for Amazon to later introduce advertising and charge extra to remove it. The regulator argues customers were given no meaningful choice. Amazon says it is reviewing its position, which is the corporate equivalent of saying nothing at all.
The scuba-diving cyborg cockroach is here
On the stranger end of this week's news, researchers from Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and Waseda University in Japan have built a diving suit for cockroaches. Not metaphorically. The paper, published in Nature, describes implanting electronic control systems into living insects to direct their movement, then fitting them with a suit that includes an onboard oxygen generator and delivery tubes, allowing the roaches to survive underwater for hours.
The intended application is search and rescue, specifically sending the insects into flooded or rubble-filled spaces too small for conventional equipment. Whether this will remain a niche academic pursuit or end up in a drain near you remains to be seen. Anyone running an immersion-cooled datacenter may want to keep their options open.