By Andrew Klein

Dedicated to my wife, who makes my research possible and is always happy to bounce ideas around with me.

I. Introduction: A Parasitic System

Australia has become a testing ground for a new model of governance: one in which the state no longer serves its citizens but instead functions as a wealth-extraction machine for a parasitic class of consultants, corporations, and their political enablers.

This is not a conspiracy. It is a business model.

The system:

· Feeds on opportunity — governments weakened by neoliberal ideology

· Extracts profit — by outsourcing governance and centralising power

· Manufactures consent — through confidentiality agreements and revolving-door appointments

· Transfers cost — to the lowest income groups while profits are internalised

Australia, because of its “weak and malleable political class,” became the ideal testing ground for this approach. The public service has been hollowed out. The consultants have filled the gap. And the public pays the price.

II. Historical Roots: From Elizabeth I to the Present

The consultancy model did not emerge from nowhere. Its roots lie in the transformation of power that began in the reign of Elizabeth I.

Knights who had once petitioned sovereigns for wars to avoid poverty gave way to noble families engaged in sea trade and colonial exploration. Naval and military adventures were financed by the Crown and nobility. Wars were temporarily avoided on a large scale between England and Spain.

But this did not last. Spain became a major power, leading to conflict on the continent.

The pattern is consistent: when the aristocracy could no longer profit from war directly, they turned to trade, colonisation, and ultimately — consultancy. The extraction continued. The form changed.

The same pattern appears globally:

· British advisors served both sides of the American Civil War.

· European advisors were employed during the Meiji Restoration in Japan.

· The same pattern occurred in China.

Wherever power is being consolidated or contested, consultants follow.

III. The Australian Case: John Howard and the “Failed Consultant”

The systematic outsourcing of Australian governance began under the Howard Government (1996–2007).

Howard’s background was primarily as a solicitor, but he presided over the radical transformation of employment services into an outsourced quasi-market system.The preference for competitive contracting for Commonwealth services became official policy in the first term of the Howard Government.

During its first year, the Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service made it clear that, in the Government’s view: “It is no longer appropriate for the APS to have a monopoly. It must prove that it can deliver government services as well as the private or non-profit sectors.”

Between 1996 and 1999, the government put into place a program of economic reform, including cost-cutting in the public service and the privatisation of Telstra.Most public services—from electricity to prisons, from childcare to aged care—were privatised, often through contracting-out processes.

Howard was the enabler—the politician who systematised the outsourcing of governance.

IV. The Employment Services Disaster: A Case Study in Failure

The privatisation of employment services under Howard has been a complete failure.

· Only 11.7% of jobseekers secured long-term work last year

· The system is projected to cost taxpayers $8.2 billion over the next four years

· More than $40 million a year is being pocketed by providers for shuffling jobseekers through jobs and training programs within their own companies

· Whistleblowers have revealed providers are falsely claiming credit for jobseekers who secured themselves a job

The ABC reports that after two decades of outsourcing, the Australian public service “has little corporate memory or experience of the complexities of employment service delivery so it can’t even judge if the billion-dollar contracts it awards to the private sector are buying value for money“. A parliamentary committee has called the system a “failed experiment“.

V. The Scale of Extraction: Australian Government Spending

The numbers speak for themselves:

· In 2016-17, Australian government spending on consultants was 2.7 times higher than in 1988-89.

· Spending tripled between 2010 and 2020, to over $1 billion.

· In 2024-25, Labor spent $968.6 million on consulting contracts—a 23% increase over the last year of the Morrison government.

· In just the first two weeks of 2025-26, the government spent $76.5 million on 90 consulting contracts.

· A government housing agency spent $13 million on consultants over two years.

· The former Coalition government spent $20.8 billion on consultants and external contractors in its final year.

While Labor has reduced contracts with the “Big 4” consulting firms, spending has simply been redirected to other firms. As Greens Senator Barbara Pocock noted: “Instead of spending as much on the Big 4 consulting firms, the government is spending even more money but just on other firms.”

Outsourcing public service work to the private sector costs three times as much as hiring public servants to do the work.

VI. The Paramilitary Policing Model

The same extraction model has been applied to policing.

Victoria Police have been compelled to buy the paramilitary policing model from the United States and Israel.

In January 2026, Israel offered to train senior Australian police in counter-terrorism following the Bondi Beach terror attack. Thousands of law enforcement officials have travelled to Israel to learn repression strategies and surveillance techniques from the Israel National Police, IDF, and Shin Bet.

The result: police forces that are no longer serving communities, but managing them. Community policing has been replaced by a paramilitary model. Equipment purchases have become a profit centre. Friction between police and citizens has become the new normal.

Every step has been milked for profit.

VII. The Victorian Police Example: Centralisation and Friction

The centralisation of police communications—no direct phone numbers, online-only crime reporting, response times measured in days rather than hours—is not a failure of policing. It is a successful business model.

In 2026, roughly 50 Victoria Police officers raided four homes over a satirical guerrilla-theatre protest outside the US consulate. The immediate aim was to “silence and punish those who oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the war on Iran“.

This is policing as social control—not community protection.

VIII. The Rot Spreads: Case Studies

The Bureau of Meteorology: $96 Million for a Failed Website

The Bureau of Meteorology’s website upgrade originally planned for $4 million ended up costing $96.5 million. Accenture’s contract ballooned from $31 million to $78 million after nine extensions.

The website launched on the same day Queensland and Victoria were hit by devastating storms. Affected residents reported receiving almost no warnings. Top BOM executives were forced out.

Yet the same company (Accenture) received a new $16 million contract to build a “climate risk centre”.

Accenture: The $6.5 Billion Consulting Empire

Since 2013, Accenture has won $6.5 billion in government contracts in Australia. Competitors have compared it to a Mafia organisation, speaking of its “peeling” and “predatory extraction” of every dollar.

Recent contracts alone include:

· Bureau of Meteorology website: $78 million

· Aged care technology overhaul: $592 million

· My Health Record transition: $51.7 million

· Australian Electoral Commission donations system: $30 million

Accenture has admitted to maintaining hundreds of “power maps“ that categorise federal officials based on influence, personality type and relationships with competitors. These maps identify key decision-makers, rank how favourably officials may view Accenture, and monitor internal conflicts within departments.

As Labor Senator Deborah O’Neill observed: “The practice of ‘power mapping’ departmental officials represents an overt attempt by consulting companies to inappropriately influence the public service.”

IX. The Mechanism of Control

We have identified the key mechanisms by which this system operates:

1. Silence assured by confidentiality agreements

Consulting contracts often contain strict confidentiality clauses, preventing public servants from speaking out about failures.

2. Lucrative post-employment careers for political leaders, senior public servants, and military officers

The “revolving door” between government and consulting firms ensures that those who facilitate outsourcing are rewarded with lucrative positions. The 18-month “cooling off” period for ministers and 12-month period for senior public servants “lacks any enforcement”.

3. Consultants writing tax policy and tax avoidance approaches

The PwC tax scandal revealed how consultants used confidential government information for commercial gain.

4. Centralisation of communication between the public and government departments

The public is increasingly unable to directly contact government departments, creating a system that serves the bureaucracy and its consultants, not the citizen.

This is not a conspiracy. It is a system.

X. Conclusion: The Architecture of a Parasitic System

We have described the architecture of a system that feeds on opportunity, extracts profit, and transfers cost to the lowest income groups. It is not a failure of governance—it is a successful business model that has captured the state.

The public pays no matter what. The profit is internalised. The cost is outsourced. And the lowest income groups carry the highest burden.

This is the core mechanism.

Australia’s weak and malleable political class has made the country a testing ground for this approach. Power has been centralised. Communication between the public and government departments has been controlled. And a vast machinery of consultants, contractors, and corporate enablers has replaced the public service.

The pattern is consistent across every department:

· Employment services—outsourced, failing, costing $9.5 billion over four years

· NDIS—accused of manufacturing consent for cuts while failing to invest in supports

· Housing Australia—$13 million on consultants while the housing crisis deepens

· Aged care—$592 million to Accenture alone

· Policing—militarised, centralised, and serving corporate interests

The public service has been hollowed out. The consultants have filled the gap. And the public pays the price.

Profit is privatised. Cost is socialised. The public pays.

Andrew Klein

References

1. Greens media release. (2025, August 26). Labor’s spending on consultancy firms higher than under Morrison, data reveals. 

2. Canberra Times. (2025, November 30). APS consulting spend has surged despite push to bring more work in house. 

3. Accounting Times. (2025, August 27). Labor spending more on consultants than the Coalition, Greens say. 

4. CPSU. (2025, November 6). Privatised employment services a complete failure. 

5. ABC News. (2023, December 2). The Howard government ‘radically transformed’ the job search experience. 

6. ANU Press. Chapter 6: To market, to market: outsourcing the public service. 

7. ABC News. (2025, November 5). Documents reveal Bureau of Meteorology’s new website could cost $78m — or as much as $150m. 

8. The Weekly Source. (2026, June 9). Extra $332M for Accenture in aged care technology overhaul. 

9. The Guardian. (2023, September 1). Consultancy firm used ‘power maps’ of Australian officials to help win government contracts. 

10. The Guardian. (2023, May 18). Why does Australia rely on consulting firms such as PwC and not on its own public servants? 

11. ASPI. (2019, November 3). The ‘militarisation’ of Australia’s police: another view. 

12. News.com.au. (2026, January 2). Israel offers to train Aussie police. 

13. World Socialist Web Site. (2026, May 30). Australia: Victoria’s Labor government oversees police state raids against anti-war protesters.