Treasurer’s overspend on consultants leaves budget in tatters

Tasmanian Labor
  • Liberals overspend on consultants by $8 million
  • Taxpayers bear the cost of Liberals’ lavish spending
  • Frontline jobs and essential services at risk
  • The Hodgman Government is putting frontline jobs and essential services at risk by failing to cut excessive spending on consultants.

    Shadow Treasurer David O’Byrne said the Liberals have blown the budget and have recklessly indulged in a 40 per cent overspend on consultants.

    “The Liberals promised that their $450 million in cuts would be delivered by slashing expenditure on advertising and consultants,” Mr O’Byrne said.

    “The focus of efficiencies is … on reducing discretionary spending in areas such as advertising, travel and transport, consultants and other supplies and consumables.” Peter Gutwein, October 16, 2019

    “This has been proven to be false and what we now know is that the Liberals have blown out on consultancies from $20 million to $28 million.

    “The Treasurers overspend on consultancies and advertising alone was $13 million last year which is more than the cuts that will be ripped from the health budget this year.

    “The Liberals continue to fork out hundreds of thousands on even more consultants, including $93,000 for a blotched infrastructure strategy, $115,000 for community engagement over prison services, and $250,000 for yet another consultant for the Westbury prison.

    “Only this week it was exposed that Michael Ferguson mislead parliament on extravagant consultant’s fees.

    “The Liberals are putting frontline jobs and essential services at risk by failing to control their lavish spending on consultants and advertising.

    “Tasmanians are the victims of this mismanagement. We know the Liberals are terrible financial managers but it’s not fair that their incompetency is occurring at the cost of hardworking Tasmanians.”

    David O’Byrne

    Shadow Treasurer

    /Public Release. View in full here.