By Barbara Pocock
The Canberra Times February 16 2025
It's said that short attention spans have been plaguing us since social media started serving us information and entertainment in tiny bite-sized chunks. If the spin doctors in the consulting industry expect us to forget what happened five minutes ago and let them back into the public sector fold then they need to take a reality check.
Investigations into the PwC tax leaks scandal have not even been completed, yet we see the consulting industry lining up to pitch their arguments for the outsourcing of government work to continue. When I started the Senate inquiry into the PwC affair, which sought to profit by leaking confidential government information, I was told that the other big firms would hold them responsible because they would all come under the spotlight exposing industry-wide dodgy practices.
And this is exactly what happened. The two parliamentary inquiries that I sat on heard masses of evidence that the sector was riddled with conflicts of interest, improper procurement practices, suspect invoicing, anti-competitive behaviour and dubious outcomes. That's not to mention the reams of anonymous insider info detailing dishonest, untrustworthy and unsafe behaviour said to be going on inside the Big 4.
The ink is hardly dry on the reports of these inquiries and the government is yet to respond to either of them. However, this hasn't stopped the consultants from stepping out to claim that we must be bonkers to think we can run the public service without their specialised expertise.
Former PwC CEO Luke Sayers appears before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services last year. Picture by Keegan Carroll
If there's a skerrick of truth in this claim, it's because, when Tony Abbott capped staffing numbers in 2015, private consultants began luring public servants with insider knowledge and experience into their firms to bid for outsourced contracts. This manoeuvre created a massive shadow government run by the private sector, which cost taxpayers $20.8 billion in the last year of the Morrison government alone.
This hollowing out of the public service has created a capability gap but the answer is not to continue farming out core government work to the private sector. Instead, we must rebuild the capacity of the APS, including through higher wages to attract and retain the expertise that we need. We need more strategic workforce planning and recruitment coupled with the benefits of well-managed utilisation of AI. There is no need to return to the Abbott and Morrison era of wholesale denigration of the public service and massive staff cuts.
Everyone on both sides of the table at our inquiries recognised that there will always be some instances where there is a need for the temporary utilisation of external experts. However, it is infuriating to hear KPMG consultants, freshly arrived from a career at the Defence Department, claiming that targeted spending on consulting firms can enhance in-house capabilities while salivating at the profitable prospect.
Is this the same KPMG that the ABC's 4 Corners program alleged had been ripping off Defence with inflated invoices and charging for work that was never completed? The same KPMG that was advising aged care providers on how to pass safety audits while simultaneously conducting those audits for the department? The same KPMG that an independent report into a key Defence project suggested there was profound confusion inside Defence about who was in charge and what was actually being delivered?
Some of this detail was unearthed in an investigation by the mid-tier consultancy Anchoram whose CEO, Glenn Ashe, sensibly suggested that "...if you're using consultants properly, you bring them in to do a particular task and then you say goodbye to them".
As a parliament and as a society, we must retain hard-earned lessons for more than five minutes. The over-reliance on external providers to deliver core government services has the potential to drain government coffers and leave departments in disarray. We are witnessing troubling scenes playing out in the United States as the Trump White House, led by Elon Musk, unleashes its razor gang on the federal bureaucracy. These may provide advance notice of what could lie ahead for our public service under a future hard-right Australian government, led by Peter Dutton, happily governing in Trump's dark shadow.
If that's what you think good governance looks like then I'm afraid to say, you're bonkers.
- Barbara Pocock is a senator for South Australia and the Greens spokeswoman on the public sector.
