Finance department hires consultant to advise on hiring consultants in move compared to ABC’s Utopia

It’s consultants all the way down.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

The contract has been compared to an episode of the ABC satire Utopia and as an example of the public service’s reliance on external expertise, even as the federal government tries to save money and do more work in-house.

The finance minister, Katy Gallagher, has confirmed Simon Longstaff, the chief executive of the Ethics Centre, has been hired to help the department decide how to best engage with consultancy firm PwC Australia and its new spin-off company, Scyne.

But the Greens senator Barbara Pocock, who is part of a parliamentary inquiry examining the conduct of consultants, questioned why the government was “relying on third parties to make critical policy decisions”.

Last week, the new company’s non-executive director, Andrew Greenwood, told the Australian Financial Review that staff must meet a higher level of ethics and integrity.

PwC’s former acting chief executive, Kristin Stubbins, told a NSW parliamentary inquiry in June that no one involved in the confidentiality scandal would be transferred to the new company.

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