I’ve been criticising the rise and rise of consultants for some years now because they represent not just a problem for the public service but for our democracy, writes Bernard Keane.
“Gee,” the minister said to the public servant, having looked through the 150-odd, often white and empty, pages of a consultant’s report into the potential privatisation of a piece of commonwealth infrastructure. “Your people could have done better than this, couldn’t they?”
And thus a Howard government minister took his first step in understanding that consultants added far less value than he’d assumed.
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