Allan Fels and David Cousins completed their transport review so why are they still being paid?

NSW Transport Minister John Graham and Premier Chris Minns. Picture: Max Mason-Hubers

Allan Fels and David Cousins. Two eminent blokes who completed their NSW tolling review 18 months ago. Job done. Report filed. Recommendations made. Time to go home.

Except they haven’t gone home.

They are still on the taxpayer payroll. Still being paid $165,000 – each. To keep their phones on, essentially. That’s their gig now. In case the government needs some “ad hoc advice”, as one bureaucrat told parliament. Which is what bureaucrats say instead of: “We’ve got no idea why we’re still paying them, but we are – and it’s not just to keep their phones charged.”

Last week we wrote about Bruce Billson earning $400,000 for a job he practically invented for himself. We thought he’d coined it. But Fels and Cousins have gone one better. This is the consulting equivalent of being paid to breathe. This is genius, really.

Allan Fels is still on the NSW payroll despite having completed the jointly prepared report.

But, fun aside, no one seems to know what they’re actually doing. It would be reasonable to think they’re on standby in case NSW Roads Minister John Graham wakes up at 3am in a cold sweat about toll road pricing and needs to ring someone who knows what they’re talking about.

Except, no. Because neither Fels nor Cousins is involved in the ongoing negotiations on pricing that are happening between the NSW government and Transurban, nor anything else for that matter. They’ve been out of the loop ever since they handed in their report on toll roads last July (for which they pocketed $1.7m between them).

Meanwhile, the government is locked in a room with Transurban, the owner-operator, the one that makes all the money. It’s negotiating, going back and forth on pricing, on contracts. Legally binding ones that are sticky and impenetrable. Some of which don’t expire until we’re all dead; that extend into a future when somehow Elon Musk will still be alive and heading up the world’s largest company of flying cars.

It’s a mess. Roads with flat charges, roads tolled by the kilometre, prices that increase at fixed rates and others that are pegged to inflation, roads that are free if you’re going north but not if you’re heading south.

Bruce Billson

John Graham. Picture: Richard Dobson

The Sydney Harbour Bridge, for example. Free to leave the city, but costs you to come back. Which makes sense; there’s bugger all up there anyway.

You might think – reasonably – that it would be fitting to keep Fels and Cousins on the books if their report had been greeted with wild enthusiasm. If the government had embraced all the recommendations.

But that’s not what happened.

A marquee proposal – the big one, a centrepiece – was to scrap a cashback scheme for western Sydney motorists. It was a scheme so politically sacred and sensitive that removing it would be tantamount to electoral suicide. And what did Premier Chris Minns do? He disowned it. He called a press conference and killed it stone dead before the ink was dry.

In the background was Treasury, smouldering at the report. Its officials warned that key elements would risk the state’s credit rating. Blow a $95bn hole in the budget. Some of these officials had also queried Fels’ expenses.

Motorists are charged tolls for crossing the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Picture: Monique Harmer

They were asking awkward questions about lavish hotel stays, about a speech he’d given at a newspaper summit. Was giving speeches, they wondered, really core business for a toll road inquiry?

“It’s part of the job,” Fels shot back. “The minister also spoke. I was not paid, nor received expenses payment.” One public servant replied: “LOL.” Which is magnificent to witness in official correspondence; we saw it because the emails ended up being released to parliament.

A few months later, Fels appeared on national television accusing Treasury of suppressing parts of his report. So relations between them are, shall we say, frosty. By which we mean: they despise each other.

Yet, here we are, still paying Fels and Cousins. We asked them on Monday exactly what they are doing to earn their combined $330,000 in consulting fees. Silence from Cousins. Fels referred us to NSW Transport for comment.

And we asked because neither of them is involved in the Transurban negotiations. Nor are they doing any actual work while legions of Transport and Treasury consultants are carrying out the graft. For a portion of the pay. None of them, we know for a fact, are taking home $165,000 – just to keep their phone nearby.