I noted last month how the Abbott Government’s culling of the public service has led to an increase in spending on consultants and contractors, many of whom were former government employees, and how this was reminiscent of 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.
Today, we have received confirmation of just how big the consultants spend has become, with nearly $10 billion spent in 2014-15, according to The Canberra Times:
New figures from the Finance Department show nearly $10 billion of the total went to pay external “management and business professionals” and on “administrative services” in the wake of the loss of thousands of full-time public service jobs.
Another $13 billion was spent on “politics and civic affairs” as spending on external services grew to $39 billion, twice the $20 billion spent on goods…
At the same time, the number of public servants has fallen from 166,000 to 152,000, with more job cuts expected. The government also remains locked in a bitter pay dispute with the main public service union.
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.
