Queensland government splashes $4m on Olympic consultants

More than $4m in taxpayer money has been spent on external advice for the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games, some of which was ignored, in a move the state opposition has blasted as ‘wasteful’.

Queensland Premier Steven Miles. Picture: NCA NewsWIRE / John Gass

More than $4m in taxpayer money has been spent on external advice for the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games, some of which was ignored, in a move the opposition has blasted as “wasteful”.

The consultancy spend, revealed in parliamentary question on notice from LNP Treasury spokesman David Janetzki, comes after former Queensland University of Technology vice-chancellor Peter Coaldrake warned that the state’s public service was being “hollowed out” by use of external consultants.

The $4.42m splashed on external auditors, consultants and lawyers since Brisbane was awarded the Games in 2021 includes a $788,317 report from Deloitte that recommended the government axe a planned independent Olympic infrastructure body.

Premier Steven Miles reinstated the oversight body last week after months of shambolic planning. Key findings from a review into Olympic venues, led by former Brisbane lord mayor Graham Quirk, were also ignored.

Mr Janetzki said the state government was “obsessed” with outsourcing public service work to consultants. “Labor has already wasted 1000 days and delivered nothing, and now we know on top of that they’ve wasted over $4m of taxpayer’s money on external consultants’ advice, which they ignored anyway,” he said.

“The Coaldrake review was scathing of the Palaszczuk-Miles government’s obsession with outsourcing work to consultants.

“They have completely ignored this call.

“When Cameron Dick became Treasurer, he promised to slash spending on consultants. The Auditor-General exposed that total consulting spending has increased by over 50 per cent since 2019.”

Professor Coaldrake’s public sector review, delivered in mid-2022, uncovered a culture tolerant of bullying, dominated by short-term political thinking and unwilling to give life to unfashionable points of view.

“Part of the problem is an identifiable loss of capacity in the public service, which has been accelerated by what is now an over-reliance on external contractors and consultants,” he wrote in his final report.

“The longer-term impact has been circular: the more work is outsourced, the less capacity is developed within the ranks of the public service, and the more public service roles default to ‘contract management’ rather than the hard but rewarding graft of policy analysis, testing and costing of options, making and defending recommendations, or the challenges of on-time, on-budget project management.”

Infrastructure Minister Grace Grace defended the $4.42m consultancy spend, saying the government wanted to ensure the 2032 Games brought lasting benefits to the state. “Governments periodically use external providers for a variety of reasons when particular skills are not available within the Queensland public sector,” she said.

She said since 2021, consultants had been engaged to give advice on development of a legacy strategy, governance arrangements and project validation reports for planned venues. “The Department of State Development has strong controls and reporting around external contract management to ensure that where consultants are engaged, they provide good value for money,” she said.