Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Yesterday I reflected on the important work of Services Australia in various communities and thanked in particular a lot of the public servants within Services Australia for the work they do. I also reflected on the fact that Services Australia has one of the biggest IT and digital budgets, outside of Defence, in the federal government. In particular, it is home to the Digital Transformation Agency. Under the ministerial arrangements, the minister for Services Australia is the minister for the Digital Transformation Agency as well.

The concept of the DTA was supported by Labor. We saw the value in using technology to deliver better services to the public, so we've been a long-time supporter of it. But what's happening to the DTA is a tragedy. It has been slowly drained of its essence. It's been slowly drained of its vigour and its ability to deliver on what its charter was initially—even in this budget, with what we've seen with the number of staff. During a pandemic, at a time of soaring unemployment, one thing the federal government could do, as I said last night, is take on more people, talented people, to give them a job and give them a start. There are so many people out there who have digital skills and could be brought on to help deliver government services better, and that could be done within the Digital Transformation Agency. What have we seen happen? We've seen the Digital Transformation Agency lose staff in this budget. In fact, the budget shows the average staffing level has fallen from 217 in the last financial year to 182 in 2020-21, despite the agency receiving a funding boost, so they've got more money!

The Digital Transformation Agency was supposed to be home to the best and brightest tech talent within government to do the job needed to transform the way we deliver services using technology. It has not actually become home to talent; instead, it's becoming is a honey pot for consultants. In the budget they cut the number of staff but increased the funding. Who is the winner? The winner is consultancy after consultancy. We have more DTA contracts for Boston Consulting Group and KPMG. Deloitte's contract with DTA has tripled, to nearly $30 million. Boston Consulting Group gets another $300,000 pay rise from DTA. DTA consultant costs are up by five times in one year.

It's not that I have a problem with consultants; some of my best friends are consultants. But the reality is that the DTA was not meant to be a clearing house for consulting payments. It was supposed to bring in talent to work on problems with the way government was delivering services and come up with solutions. Now what we're seeing is consultant after consultant being brought in. I guess it's no surprise that the head of the DTA is a former consultant of Boston Consulting. Please don't think I'm suggesting there's anything wrong. What I am saying is that if you have an ex-consultant in and your consultants' pay-outs are increasing and the number of employees you've got is decreasing, it's a bit rich.

The other thing I find surprising is that they brought on consultants and paid nearly a million dollars to work out funding options. They brought consultants in to work out how DTA could get more money, which then eventually went to extra consultants. The only activity we're seeing is conceptualising of what could be done to bring on more consultancy work and make existing consultants better, instead of bringing in people with talent to help the Public Service deliver its service to the public more efficiently. It's just wrong!

That's the problem with the government: they don't believe in the Public Service. They think the Public Service is something to be constrained rather than celebrated. In this great city of Canberra there are so many great public servants. We have criticisms of some of the higher-ups, but there are a lot of people in this town doing great things to help the people of this nation. At a time where a pandemic has ripped through employment in this country putting people to work for the betterment of other people in this country is a noble ambition and a worthy ambition at that. But this government is all about contracting out. It's all about bringing the consultants in. They're the only ones that seem to be doing well out of this. Instead of using technology in a way that would deliver meaningful results, meaningful benefits and concrete outcomes they're just not doing it. It is an absolute disgrace.

We will have legislation like this that we're debating now. We'll talk about name changes and give effect to name changes. We don't need branding and marketing exercises. We need a serious effort, during a pandemic, to help the nation out, to help its economy, to build jobs, to build better services and to do it in a meaningful way, not just create a consultants' carousel that enriches some of these big agencies at the expense of what we believe can actually truly be done to deliver better service for the public.

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