Daniel Andrews’s $3.5m cash splash on Covid consultants

The Andrews government hired up to 35 KPMG management consultants at a cost of almost $3.5m help co-ordinate its COVID-19 response.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

The Andrews government hired up to 35 KPMG management consultants at a cost of almost $3.5m over less than four months to help co-ordinate its COVID-19 response, and has refused to say whether any consultant had a role in establishing Victoria’s bungled hotel quarantine system.

The news that Premier Daniel Andrews was forced to draft “Covid consultants” to help his public servants battle the virus is contained in details of dozens of COVID-19 contracts obtained by The Australian. Also revealed is an almost $3m contract for mental health nurses in hotel quarantine, issued weeks after a man died in a Melbourne hotel.

According to the documents, the KPMG contract covered the “secondment of up to 35 KPMG staff to assist with COVID-19 operations”, from May 1 until August 8, at a cost of $3,403,243. That works out to $97,235 per consultant over the almost four month period, or more than $291,700 per consultant annualised.

A further contract, running from April 4 to July 15, set aside $195,954 for “COVID-19 secondment of KPMG employee to support community services planning and co-ordination office”.

Asked how many KPMG staff members had been hired, what they were doing, and whether the contracts represented value for money for the taxpayer, a spokeswoman for the Andrews government said: “To fight this pandemic, the government has employed a range of people, including professionals seconded from private companies.”

The spokeswoman said KPMG secondees had been working in “operational and forward project planning involving contact tracing, call centre operations, forecasting, case management, outbreak and cluster investigation, data entry and analysis”.

The Premier’s office did not directly address a question about whether the KPMG staff had been involved in hiring contractors to provide security as part of the government’s quarantine system, referring to a judicial inquiry currently being conducted by retired judge Jennifer Coate.

“It would be inappropriate to comment whilst that process is under way,” a spokeswoman said.

Victoria’s quarantine hotels have been responsible for clusters of more than 60 COVID-19 cases in security contractors and their close contacts, with a high proportion of current cases genomically linked to those clusters.

Other services procured by the Andrews government as part of its COVID-19 response include almost $3m for the “provision of mental health nurses for returned overseas travellers in mandatory quarantine in hotel accommodation”.

The two-month mental health nurse contract began on May 1, weeks after the death in mid April of a man in hotel quarantine in Melbourne.

That death remains the subject of a coronial inquest.

A further $3.52m went to a national collaboration on sewage surveillance for coronavirus, while $1.54m was spent on “delivery of 13 online courses” for the Andrews government’s “Working for Victoria” employment scheme, aimed at finding new jobs for people who had lost them as a result of the pandemic.

A $1.27m Department of Premier and Cabinet contract for a “social cohesion campaign” runs from April 24 to the end of October.

Almost $2m was spent on “37 contracts entered into (in) May 2020 for programmed maintenance, construction and property upgrades for the Director of Housing”, for COVID-19 related improvements in public housing.

The Andrews government on Monday used its casting vote in state parliament’s Public Accounts and Estimates Committee to block an attempt by the Coalition, Greens and Liberal Democrats to schedule an inquiry which would compel the Premier, senior ministers and bureaucrats to appear and face questions over the COVID-19 response before the end of the month.

As a consequence, no minister or bureaucrat will be subjected to any form of parliamentary scrutiny until August.