KEY POINTS:
In my early days at the Auckland Star you had to seek the permission of the chief reporter before making a toll call. And to underline the costly gravity of the event, if you did get the all clear, you had to do it through the operator. These days it's a free for all. A similar change in culture seems to have occurred in local government's approach to employing outside consultants.
These days, bureaucrats don't seem to be able to change a light bulb without summonsing an outside expert to draw up the specifications. The crucial difference between telephoning and consulting, is that while the price of phoning has dramatically dropped over the years, the cost of consulting has rocketed.
Auckland mayoral hopeful and political neophyte Steve Crow says he's aghast to discover a team of 40 consultants has cost the city $18 million over the past year to review the city's regulations. The city says he's got it wrong, the actual cost of the 18-month project is more, at $19.6 million, but only $5 million is going to international accountants Deloittes. The rest is for "programme" costs (unspecified), IT and other staff costs.
What is more eye-opening is that the $5 million going to Deloittes is just a fraction of the $40.84 million in total that Auckland City spent on consultants in the 2006-07 financial year. Of the top 10 "suppliers" that year, Deloittes came in second behind Opus International. Then came GHD, Ascari Partners and Tonkin and Taylor.
This grand total was approaching double the $26.23 million paid out the previous year, when Opus again topped the list, followed by Deloitte, GHD, Ascari and Tonkin and Taylor. In 2004-05, the total was $23.97 million, with Opus on top again, then GHD, Independent Election Services, Beca Carter Hollings and Ferner and Auckland Regional Council.
In releasing the above figures to independent mayoral candidate Lisa Prager, city officials justified the expenditure by saying: "Over the past three years, significant work has gone into planning and design of the major infrastructure projects. This includes identifying the major initiatives, having the right staff and the right expert advice with all the necessary skills and capabilities."
Of course, none of this is new. In the 2000-2001 financial year, Auckland City spent $42 million on consultants, and $36 million the following year.
Of the latter sum, $56,250 went in December 2001 to the razor gang headed by Sir William Birch, set up by new Mayor John Banks to find ways of shaving $25 million off the city budget. This was one consultant, you could say, who earned his keep and then some. He actually identified potential cuts worth $45.99 million.
In the recent flailing around seeking alternative funding methods and governance reforms for local government, the cost benefits or otherwise of consulting outside consultants seems to have escaped review. Perhaps finding a consultant to do the task has proved too hard.
Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee is, like many campaigning politicians, quick to call for a cleansing, saying there's "far too much reliance on expensive outside consultants by even relatively junior local government officers".
Pick up any council agenda and you'll see what he's on about. Take Maungawhau - the mountain.
How many times has it been consulted and reported on? The latest effort, musing over alternative electric train systems to the summit, involved eight consultants, and has cost, to date, $267,761.
Then there's that monument to consultancy, the $250,000 glass and light sculpture set in the Queen St pavement outside the Civic Theatre.
It's such an embarrassment that the artist part of the trio of consultants responsible is fighting to have her name expunged from the record.
Perhaps the answer is to return to the good old days when consultants were more like toll calls. To be used with great circumspection.
Local government should also take a leaf out of state drug-buyer Pharmac's book and form a united front when dealing with these consultants, many of them offshoots of international conglomerates.
Make it clear to them we don't pay our rates to keep them in splendid waterfront glass towers and first-class trips to France for the Rugby World Cup.
Like Pharmac, set a New Zealand rate for the job and if the big boys baulk, then take the work to more modest professionals or, horror of horrors, threaten to do it in-house.
