Harris Scarfe history on wiki

There was not a single independent director on the audit committee of One.Tel, Harris Scarfe,

Harris Scarfe had 2 former partners of its audit firm on its board Harris Scarfe's board included two family members of the person who bought effective control of the company in the
1970s.
http://cclsr.law.unimelb.edu.au/files/Report_on_Governance_at_5_Failed_Companies_031028.pdf

By way of a recent example to illustrate my point, Jim Psaros and Michael Seamer in a recent Charter article 7 make the observation that, while the Corporate Governance
Statement contained in the Harris Scafe’s 2000 financial statements indicates that the
‘directors are committed to the principles underpinning best practice in corporate governance’ their analysis, however, suggests that ‘the corporate governance practices of Harris Scarfe were less than ideal’.8 Organisations can have very good corporate governance structures and policies on paper but the substance of good corporate governance is clearly more important than the form. Another important ingredient that cannot be glossed over is the ‘soft’ subjective factors such as composition of boards and the quality of directors.
At this point I turn to the audit role and particularly to the role and independence of external auditors which have recently received unprecedented scrutiny following the collapse of HIH, OneTel, Harris Scarfe and Ansett. I have already touched upon the critical issue of the independence for audit committees and my comments are equally applicable here. However, the increased scrutiny of the auditor’s role has meant that the general community and the media are again raising questions of audit effectiveness as well as about the ‘audit expectation gap’.
Today it is rare for public accounting firms to advertise themselves as auditing firms, but rather, as