For years, I have lamented the politicisation and loss of independence of Australia’s public service, which I experienced first hand in the 2000s while working as an economist at the Commonwealth and Victorian Treasuries.
For example, at the Victorian Treasury in 2006, I saw an expensive contract granted to a consulting firm to assess the Tasmanian Freight Equalisation Scheme – work that could easily have been performed in-house using existing resources.
One of the most puzzling phenomena is that the use of consultants has mushroomed over the past 20 years at the same time as the number of bureaucrats working in the public service has also expanded.
