(Image: Wikimedia)

The consulting firm that pocketed $11 million from the government’s botched vaccine rollout — and kept the details of the contract secret for eight months — has rewarded its partners with an 18% pay rise. 

The Morrison government gave PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) a 12-month contract in December to act as a “delivery partner” for the vaccine rollout. But the details of the contract were kept secret for months after the Health Department revealed it was “mistakenly” left off the AusTender website.

On Tuesday PwC announced its partners will take home an 18% increase in profits off the back of a boom in business, thanks in part to the soaring amount of work coming from the government during the COVID-19 recovery. This is despite the firm slashing jobs during the pandemic and receiving more than a dozen sexual harassment and serious misconduct complaints.

The starting income for a PwC partner is about $350k, according to the AFR. 

CEO Tom Seymour said despite some parts of the business struggling during 2020, overall the firm had been “busier than it has ever been”. 

Big winners

Consultants are some of the biggest winners from the pandemic, reaping more than a billion dollars in federal government contracts. The bulk of that has poured into the coffers of the seven biggest consulting firms — the big four accounting firms plus McKinsey, Boston Consulting and Accenture. 

But they have all been criticised for operating under a secrecy blanket as they handle some of the most critical work in the government’s pandemic response with little transparency. Their role in the bungled vaccine rollout has been particularly opaque, despite being paid thousands of dollars a day.

As Crikey has reported, the government outsourced key pillars of its shambolic vaccine rollout to McKinsey, Accenture and PwC. The deal with PwC was undisclosed; Health Department officials claimed it was “incorrectly registered” in its financial management system.

The use of external consultants, which has intensified over the past year, goes well beyond the vaccine rollout. Federal and state governments have spent millions on them, and they’ve been put in charge of everything from the COVIDSafe app to mapping the impact of the pandemic on tourism and education.

But despite increasing its partner income, PwC cut 250 staff throughout the year and slashed the pay and hours of about 65% of staff by 4%. As well, it faces growing pressure to address sexual harassment and misconduct claims, along with the other big accounting firms.

PwC says it had received 13 bullying harassment, sexual harassment and serious misconduct complaints throughout the year but it would not reveal details. This compares with 17 workplace conduct complaints a year at KPMG and 15 a year at Deloitte.