Australia

Consultants don't advise, they find 'evidence' to justify policy positions. They're also not subject to FOI requests and don't have to follow the same codes that public servants do. Governments love consultants because they usually don't actually want good evidence-based advice, they just want to tick the box that says they did 'research'.

I say this as a phd student who wants to go into academia but will probably end up working for one of these consultants because the government would rather give them money than fund actual research.

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A government agency allegedly censored a major study that was critical of the big four consultancy firms because their partners sat on its board, according to the academic who wrote the report.

The allegation, made during a parliamentary inquiry into the ethics and professional standards of the consulting industry, has led to questions about potential “regulatory capture” and possible undue influence.

The Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB), which provides oversight of how companies are audited, commissioned Peter Carey and George Tanewski from Deakin University to study the quality of financial reports.

After more than a decade of research, Carey and Tanewski told the inquiry they believed some of the audits performed by the so-called big four – KPMG, Deloitte, EY and PwC – “did not uphold quality”.

Despite agreeing with O’Neill’s characterisation of “regulatory capture”, Carey praised the AASB for taking the issue of auditing standards seriously and said “they were so worried about the quality they wanted to make it public”.

“Businesses, investors and stakeholders will benefit from engaging with a single entity responsible for corporate reporting … that will deliver collaborative and effective standards and avoid unnecessary costs,” he said.

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