Mark Calaway has been appointed as a junior auditor of West Accounting Limited (WAL). One of his first tasks is to review the firm's audit clients to ensure that independence requirements of APES 110 (Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants) are being met. His review has revealed the following:

(b) WAL has also recently been approached by Western Mining Limited (WML) to conduct its audit. The accountant at WML, Stephanie Gellar is the wife of David Gellar who is an audit partner at WAL. David has shown interest to lead the WML audit.

Using the conceptual framework in APES 110 (Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants), answer the following questions:

1. Identify potential threat(s) to independence & recommend safeguards (if any) to reduce the independence threat(s) identified.

2. Provide an objective assessment of whether audit independence can be achieved.