I noted last week how the Department of Defence has been handing out redundancy payments to people they have then re-employed as contractors at higher rates of pay. And how this mirrored what happened when the Howard Government was first elected in 1996 and commenced a program of cutting spending and jobs across public sector agencies, only to then hire the same people back as consultants and contractors at higher rates of pay.
Over the weekend, The Canberra Times revealed that the while the Abbott Government’s culling of the public service had reduced headcount by 15,000, departments were now spending far more on consultants and contractors:
The 18 major Commonwealth departments reduced their wages bill by $109 million last financial year, according to Fairfax Media analysis of their recently released annual reports.
But consultant and contractor costs increased by a whopping $205 million – almost double the money saved. The increase took the departments’ total consultant and contractor bills for 2014-15 to a little over $1 billion..
The 18 departments also spent $78 million on redundancy packages during the year.
These figures refer only to the umbrella departments themselves, not the 90-plus other agencies under their purview…
Of course, the problems runs deeper than merely replacing one set of workers with a more expensive set of workers. It also reflects the broader loss of independence and the politicisation of the public service, whereby governments of both persuasions are now too willing to outsource policy development to consultants or (erroneously named) think tanks.
Add in the seemingly unbridled growth in the number of staffers and advisors in ministers’ offices, and the role of departments in policy formulation and advice has been badly diminished.
The end result is that the days of “frank and fearless advice” from the public service are gone, replaced by spin and bought analysis designed to support a pre-conceived political agenda.
