Disaster response agency Resilience NSW faces heat on costs

The NSW government’s leading response agency has been criticised for a lack of output despite spending nearly $1 million on external consultants.

The main street of the NSW south coast town of Cobargo after bushfires devastated it in 2019. Picture: Facebook

The NSW government’s leading disaster response agency has been criticised for spending nearly $1m on external consultants and ­embarking on a hiring spree of executive-level managers as jobs are being cut and wages frozen across the public service.

Resilience NSW, led by former Rural Fire Service commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons, awarded an $873,000 contract to multinational accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to design and establish the newly formed organisation, announced by Premier Gladys Berejiklian last April.

Numerous government MPs have criticised its lack of output since forming nine months ago, saying the agency had provided no briefings, advisories or reports to government, despite commanding a substantial budget and large numbers of staff on substantial ­salaries. “Other agencies are cutting public servants under the wage cap and Treasury efficiency dividend,” said one government official familiar with the matter.

“No one knows what they’re actually doing.”

The agency has about 100 staff, including 11 senior managers, and was provided $38m to cover employee-related expen­ses during the 2020-21 financial year, according to the most recent NSW budget papers.

A spokeswoman said the staffing capacity was expected to expand to 220 people over the next 12 months.

Its total budget stands at $996m, though $865m comprises grants and subsidies for disaster expenditure.

The spokeswoman said the agency was administering a further $60m in grants not identified in budget papers, meaning its budget was closer to $71.3m.

Labor Treasury spokesman Walt Secord said this was still too high for an agency whose purpose appeared to be administering grants. “At a time when the NSW Treasurer says we will face record deficits and he is slashing frontline services like child protection and ratcheting up transport fares and fines, the test will be what this $1bn agency will actually deliver; that is the $1bn question,” he said.

“It is bureaucracy gone mad when a relief agency spends $71m on itself rather than actual disaster relief. A board of a charity would not tolerate this.”

Mr Secord also took aim at the agency’s need to hire external consultants for work that, he said, could have been completed by existing employees. “Senior NSW public servants are privately asking why the NSW government can’t carry out this work rather than outsourcing drafting flow charts to an outside body. It would be cheaper and more sensible to use existing staff.”

The Resilience NSW spokeswoman said the agency had been tasked with leading the “largest recovery operation ever undertaken in the state of NSW following the devastating bushfires” and engaged the external assistance because it “did not have this capability internally”.

In November 2020, the NSW Audit Office published a report saying the NSW government had spent $155m on consultants in the previous financial year.

Treasurer Dominic Perrottet has previously identified external consultants as a target for savings.