Yet more evidence of consulting firm McKinsey’s lucrative relationship with the Morrison government has emerged, after the blue-chip company inked a deal worth $2.2 million with the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources to provide professional advice on a business case for manufacturing an mRNA vaccine onshore.
The contract, which ran from late December to March, and was worth nearly $25,000 a day, indicates the government has been considering the possibility of locally manufacturing mRNA vaccines for some time.
Currently, Australia is only producing the AstraZeneca vaccine locally, and experts have slammed the government for not investing in local manufacture of mRNA vaccines.
But the contract also represents another sugar hit for McKinsey, a company which, as Crikey previously reported, has made millions off the government’s pandemic response. The firm currently has a $3 million contract with the Department of Health to assist with the vaccine rollout after its initial deal was extended and doubled in value last week. It also signed a $2.4 million deal with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to advise on “maximising economic and social opportunities” arising out of the vaccine rollout.
All up, McKinsey has now made well over $7 million in COVID-19 related government contracts since December last year. Further analysis shows the value of contracts between McKinsey and the federal government doubled in value from almost $23 million in 2019 to over $50 million in 2020.
And while the Australian government continues to line the pockets of the notoriously secretive consulting firm, McKinsey’s international reputation continues to haemorrhage.
The company recently settled for almost $600 million with US regulators over its role in inflaming the country’s opioid epidemic. The firm has a long history of doing dirty work for authoritarian governments like China and Saudi Arabia, and French lawmakers were incensed that President Emmanuel Macron would let it control the country’s sluggish vaccine rollout.
In spite of all that, it’s still good enough to take millions of Australian taxpayer dollars.
This article was updated to reflect a response from the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources clarifying the contract description.
It must be past time to put the governance of this country out to public tender.
The LNP obviously thinks it is a great idea given its demonstrated incompetence and prejudices in most anything and their preference for expensive, tailored, sycophantic advice on just about any aspect of governance.
I suppose the only negative for the LNP would be foregoing the right to rort the public purse for their supporters and fellow travellers, rort appointments to government bodies and quangos and live off the fat of their parliamentary sinecures.
The prospect of outsourcing the entire government to McKinsey loosens my bowels. For that would bring about government by a whole office full of Angus Taylors. Isn’t one enough?
One AngusT is far too many.
Angus is a legend in his own lunch box. Go easy on him
!
If McKinsey executives were gifted Cartier watches to celebrate these wins, how would we know?
How would the prime minister feel? Could some journalist please ask him?
Exceelent point. Based om previous form i wom’t be surprised if Smirko is just lining up his next gig.
Why we let McKinsey anywhere near healthcare is beyond me.. their role pushing opiodes in the U.S. would see a billion year prison sentence if they were a dime bag dealer in a some back alley – fine company you’re keeping there PM… Christian values indeed.
You left out the worst bit about McKinsey.
Angus Taylor is one of their alumni.
Surely that is definitive evidence of incompetence and ethical absence.
Not just Taylor. Health Minister Hunt also did a few years with McKinsey, which his department is now contracting.
It’s a novel concept. Usually the pollies get jobs in these corporations when they leave politics, not the other way around.
Whilst I cant stand this government or their secrecy and hypocracy, before passing judgement on the “$2.4 million deal with the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet to advise on “maximising economic and social opportunities” arising out of the vaccine rollout.”, I’d like to know what they actually contributed.
Perhaps their contribution was significant and will result in better outcomes for Australians and our economy.
It’s the secrecy that is the primary issue. We dont know what we are getting for the money or if it is a good investment. That is the outrage.
But just criticising the fact that they got the money ignores the fact that consultancy firms do have something to offer government, especially one as clueless as this one.
Would you really trust Morrison and Hunt to be developing strategies on their own? They could, of course, use the experience and expertise of the public service, but they probably have trash-talked them too much over the decades to think that they could be useful.
They wouldn’t be so clueless if they had not gutted the federal public service in the past 30 years, ably supported by the ALP. There has been a significant loss of capacity and institutional memory over that time due to the 1-2% efficiency dividends over that period.
Sped up by Tony Abbott.
Um – The contract, which ran from late December to March, was worth nearly $25,000 a day. I’d like to know what was actually achieved as I can see absolutely no evidence that any “maximising [of] economic and social opportunities” that occurred during the vaccine rollout.
Perhaps their contribution is now safely tucked away with the rest of the billions this government outsources. The only winner here is the Caymans Islands banking industry. I hear they are erecting a statue to some Australian bloke, Somebody Taylor for his stupendous effort to keep Caymans Islands banks the preferred choice for those embarrassing billions you cant explain.
Imagine how many properly qualified people you could employ for $2.4 million to do their jobs well, instead of vastly overpaying essentially a marketing and spin department to write reports for how you could maximise social and economic opportunities (or on any other matter). What a social and economic opportunity that would be… to do something useful instead of writing about how something useful might be achieved…
…you could, for example, pay several dozen scientists for a year. (Or one CEO… :P)