As Australia endures one of the slowest vaccine rollouts in the world, blue-chip consulting firm McKinsey’s good fortune continues to grow.
The company has now doubled its lucrative contract with the Department of Health, up $1.4 million to $3 million, for an additional month’s worth of advice. The current contract is set to run until April 30.
And it’s not just the health department that is desperately seeking McKinsey’s advice on all things vaccine.
The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet has also handed it a lucrative $2.4 million contract to advise on “maximising economic and social opportunities” as the vaccine rollout progresses. That contract runs for 12 weeks.
‘Policy advice’
McKinsey was forced to pay nearly US$600 million in February to settle investigations into its role in helping “turbocharge” opioid sales in the US. It is also in the firing line over its role in the botched vaccine rollout in France, making questions about its work here even more pertinent — particularly with the PM&C now seeking its advice.
And while departments regularly outsource work to the private sector, it’s unclear why the PM&C would be hiring McKinsey for work on the rollout, given most of that work has been done through the Department of Health.
Details of the contract are muddy. According to the AFR, McKinsey will “provide research and analysis, project management, strategic policy advice and communications products” to the department. The department declined to elaborate any further to Crikey, saying it had contracted McKinsey to provide short-term support for a major government priority.
“PM&C’s role has always been to work closely with agencies across the Australian public service to coordinate advice to the Prime Minister and Cabinet,” it said.
Multinational consulting firms are making millions from Australia’s botched vaccine rollout but the details of their work have been shrouded in secrecy thanks to a long-standing tradition of outsourcing work to the private sector. But the critical nature of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout, now described as an “unmitigated disaster” by some experts, has put their role in the spotlight.
PwC, which in December was declared by Health Minister Greg Hunt as Australia’s “lead partner” in the rollout, will not even confirm whether it is still involved in the rollout. The consulting firm has refused to give any details about its work, saying it doesn’t comment on “client matters”. The health department has also refused to clarify whether PwC is still involved in the rollout.
A spokesperson for McKinsey Australia said the company was unable to comment specifically on its engagement with PM&C and directed questions to the department’s media team. The spokesperson also declined to comment on why the contract with the Department of Health was extended for another month.
This is a carbon copy of Morrison’s performance in his Tourist Board days…millions of dollars paid to private sector firms, their missions and performance shrouded in secrecy. He clearly knows no other way of operating.
So, Morrispin can’t do the job he is paid to do because of being incompetent, so he hires, at our expense, incompetent consultancies in the hope it makes him look more competent, or… just because he’s as thick as two short planks?
McKinsey’s “lucrative $2.4 million contract to advise on ‘maximising economic and social opportunities’”
Presumably economic opportunities means devising more schemes for Morrison’s mates to loot billions from taxpayers under cover of the epidemic, while socialising is all about dinners (or more sordid pursuits) with ministers and other party panjandrums.
Australia is not alone of course in being bled dry by parasitical consulting firms sucking at the government teat. Private Eye magazine has been documenting the phenomenon, its diabolical cost and multiple calamities in the UK for decades. In no. 1543 it reports more hundreds of millions poured into consultancy just for the National Health Service, despite parliamentary reports that it must break its reliance on consultants and temporary staff. So the NHS has given a £145 million contract for ‘designing and creating a sustainable workforce solution’ to Deloitte (average day rate per consultant £1,100). AS PE says, ‘the task of weaning services off consultants falls largely to… consultants’.
The public service in countries like Australia and the UK has been so thoroughly deskilled, demoralised and crippled by successive cuts it has lost almost all strategic capability, and this suits the big parties as much as the consultants because it keeps what is going on confidential, the consultants are mercenaries with no awkward concerns about the public interest and they are generous political donors.
Yep. Consultants don’t have to appear at Estimates hearings. And public servants can claim Commercial-in-Confidence. Accountability problem solved.
Posted above, France too. If only Australia had a Private Eye doing investigative journalism and holding power to account…. think journalist Toohey tried decades ago, but nowadays it would simply be sued out of existence…..
Apparently the US Army had to get a consultant to write its policy on how to use consultants.
very well described .
If you need consultants to do what you are paid to do – you don’t know know how to do it- and the consultants don’t know how to do it as they have to come and see what what you do .
Called vicarious employment-
‘The consulting firm has refused to give any details about its work, saying it doesn’t comment on “client matters”.’
We ARE the clients.
Let it not be forgotten that Greg Hunt worked for McKinsey before standing in Flinders.
The light dawns, again.
As did his old Melb uni mate, Uni of Tas VC, Rufus Black, who has been on a couple of government advisory groups, the latest being the 2020-2021 Tas govt’s post Covid economic and social recovery group.
The best advice McKinsey can offer the Coalition government (for the additional $1.4M) is to put a CWA branch in charge of the national vaccine rollout. A group of country women unfamiliar with this exercise is bound to be more efficient. Not to mention more transparent.
And they’d have tea and scones ready as well, no fuss.