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Yes please minister: Labor spends billions on advice

By Edmund Tadros and Markus Mannheim

The federal government has spent half a billion dollars a year on consultants since Labor won office 4½ years ago, an analysis of its contracts shows.

Yet while Finance Minister Penny Wong has warned agencies to slash this spending, few public servants believe it will happen.

The Canberra Times examined every consultancy deal published on the AusTender website in the four years since 2008 – 17,736 contracts worth $2,170,180,096.

Defence losing out in asylum camp fight
ADF refugee role attacked
Border security’s real cost

• Get the data

The federal government has spent half a billion dollars a year on consultants since Labor won office 4½ years ago, an analysis of its contracts shows.

Yet while Finance Minister Penny Wong has warned agencies to slash this spending, few public servants believe it will happen.

The Canberra Times examined every consultancy deal published on the AusTender website in the four years since 2008 – 17,736 contracts worth $2,170,180,096.

Our investigation reveals for the first time which consultants won the most work and which government agencies spent the most. Read more about government spending on consultants at The Canberra Times.

You can find out more about how to interrogate the AusTender database at my site on data journalism, Dataliser.

The Big Spend (interactive charts and table)

More stories:

Bureaucracy can’t drop adviser
Opposition sees $50m in outsourcing slash

Download the data (CSV):
Top 100 consultancy contracts
Consultant spending by department
Top 20 consultant firms

Feedback
Belinda Weaver of the University of Queensland blogged about the stories
Politician Malcolm Turnbull also made reference to the stories in a speech
The visualisation made it onto Tableau’s The Top 100 Vizzes of Q1 2012

Senior Defence brass opposed the Department of Immigration and Citizenship’s bid to use the remote Scherger RAAF base as a detention centre, documents released under freedom of information show.

Defence refused to release more than half the pages in the heavily redacted package of documents.

But the documents it did release about the arrangements between it and the Immigration Department show preparations to convert the base into a detention centre were being made on an ad hoc basis.

Read more about how Defence resisted its base being used for immigration detention at The Canberra Times.

By Bianca Hall and Edmund Tadros

The Federal Government is improperly using the Defence Department to support its refugee policies, the Australian Defence Association says.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship has entered into contracts worth at least $176million since 2010 – including $35million with Defence - to prepare and operate the Curtin and Scherger remote RAAF bases as detention centres.

Read more about the ADF’s refugee role at The Canberra Times.

By Edmund Tadros and Bianca Hall

Detention centre operators, an international training company, a NSW Government department and a multinational IT firm are the big winners from the Federal Government’s immigration policies.

An analysis of tender data by The Canberra Times has identified, for the first time, the companies that have won the most lucrative contracts from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship since 2008.

Combined with information from DIAC, a fuller picture has emerged of the true cost of the Federal Government’s asylum-seeker policy, with a refugee advocate saying the money could be better deployed in cheaper community-based alternatives.

Read more about the cost of Australia’s immigration policies at The Canberra Times.

Australia’s military university has filed at least 29 formal reports of alleged sexual offences over the past decade, including claims a female cadet was king-hit and raped while unconscious.

But the records, obtained under freedom of information law, may represent a mere fraction of all reported assaults at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

One colonel warned the school’s commandant, Commodore Bruce Kafer, in April that its archives were ”patchy” about incidents before 2009 and could not be relied on as a full account of the academy’s troubled history.

Read more about ADFA at The Canberra Times.

Christchurch resident Renea Mackie took these photos of her city four months after the massive earthquake that rocked the city in February. Photo: Renea Mackie.

The massive earthquake that destroyed large parts of New Zealand’s second biggest city struck at 12:51pm on an overcast Tuesday in February, as Grant Wells was eating a Chinese meal in a Christchurch food court.

“As soon as the shaking stopped, I got out of there as fast as I could,” the 43-year-old consultant says.

“I had to climb over a fridge that had fallen over as I left.

“Then there was about two hours of just utter, well, the world had turned upside down.

“Cell phones weren’t working, the streets were gridlocked.

“My car was on the fifth floor of a car park and I couldn’t get it out.”

ADFA’s decade of sex claims

Australia’s military university has filed at least 29 formal reports of alleged sexual offences over the past decade, including claims a female cadet was king-hit and raped while unconscious.

But the records, obtained under freedom of information law, may represent a mere fraction of all reported assaults at the Australian Defence Force Academy.

APEC 2007 – Truth revealed by Freedom-of-Infomation

Activist ‘Paddy’ Gibson lands payout after APEC arrest  POLICE made a secret payment to an activist wrongly arrested during the 2007 Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC) summit and then used this payout as an excuse to stop an internal investigation into the arrest, documents released under Freedom of Information laws reveal. NSW Police made the payment to activist Padriac “Paddy” Gibson after he launched a civil case over his illegal arrest and detention after the major anti-APEC rally in September, 2007. The APEC wall that couldn’t keep The Chaser out cost $2m THE steel and concrete fence that became a symbol of the 2007 Asia Pacific Economic Co-operation summit cost an amazing $2 million to hire for seven days, documents released under Freedom of Information laws reveal. The “Great Wall of Sydney” – which left police and the NSW Government red-faced after it was breached by The Chaser comedy team during APEC – infuriated locals and tourists by caging off the Sydney Opera House and sections of the CBD.

Prison Guards rob and bully: FoI report

NSW Police, a big group of teenagers and the ensuing riot

Universities violate privacy laws

Bashings, robberies rife at city stations

Hidden truth of joyflight crash pilot

Qantas loses fight with Falun Gong flight attendant

QANTAS has been ordered to reinstate a flight attendant banned from international duties over her practise of Falun Gong.

Sheridan Genrich, of Sydney’s Lane Cove, was demoted to short-haul after she was threatened by authorities during a 2008 Beijing stopover and deported due to her spiritual belief.

Qantas passengers exposed to toxic air, alleges book
Law firms ban workplace gossip site Firm Spy
Casino stood by as clerk lost stolen millions

THE nation’s most powerful shopping centre owners are trying to stop the expansion of US discount warehouse chain Costco, claiming a planned multi-million dollar development is illegal.

In a raft of objections, the group – including Westfield, AMP and the Shopping Centre Council of Australia – says the proposed store breaches existing state planning laws, is “inappropriate” and that to create any exemptions would be “anti-competitive”.

Cult fashion label Ed Hardy collapsed owing $15 million

The IKEA ‘honey pot’ effect Economics
Interactive economic charts 

news.com.au has a series of interactive economic charts using the amCharts tool that I helped to create (along with the talented designers).

The pictured interactive Australian dollar vs US dollar chart allows readers to zoom in and out and highlight key events during the Aussie’s 30 year journey.

More: unemployment, interest rates, inflation and GDP.

Other economic stories ]]> http://www.edmundtadros.com/business/534/feed 0