Consulting company Deloitte has told a government inquiry it made $116 million from government contracts last year, up from $41 million in 2013, with the total earnings slightly higher than previously thought.
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The company also revealed in answers to questions on notice it has 305 full time equivalent staff currently working on projects for Commonwealth agencies. While Deloitte's Canberra office had just 66 full time equivalent staff in 2009, in 2018 it has 262 full time equivalent staff.
According to Deloitte's website, the company has more than 8000 staff overall.
Three partners at the company, including one based in Brisbane, are former SES officers in the public service or ex-senior military officers, out of a total of 800 partners.
There has been increased focus on the value of government consultancy, especially to the big four accounting and consulting firms, with analysis showing between them, Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PriceWaterhouseCoopers have raked in more than $1.7 billion from the government in the past five years.
The total of the five years reported for government contracts was $371 million, $5 million higher than analysis by the Australian National Audit Office.
The rate at which government departments rely on consultants has increased as agencies feel the strain of the average staffing level cap, which limits the number of government staff to at or below 2006-07 levels. The public sector union and the Labor party have criticised the use of contractors, claiming it removes corporate knowledge from the public sector and is more expensive than doing the work in-house.
In the document, dated September 14, the accounting firm didn't say if government work was more or less profitable than the public sector, but maintained that the big four companies are strong competitors for government work, despite "semi-annual" meetings between the companies' bosses.
"At these CEO meetings, matters which affect the profession and its employees at large are discussed - for example the recent marriage equality plebiscite and technical issues such as an update on audit quality," the answer said.
The response comes after it was revealed that the bosses of the companies had met privately for semi-regular dinners, with Labor MP Julian Hill asking at a previous hearing what was discussed at such events.
"The major professional services firms are strong competitors and any discussions around the subject of matters such as pricing, bidding and contracts would be inappropriate. Deloitte’s partners are fully aware of our competition law obligations and conduct ourselves accordingly."
The company also revealed that despite declaring revenue of $2.013 billion in the last financial year, it doesn't pay tax in Australia due to its corporate structure as a partnership, with tax paid by the individual partners.
"Like most legal and accounting organisations, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is a partnership, which is not a tax paying entity in Australia. We do have corporate entities in our structure but the entire profit of these is distributed at least annually to the partners as dividends. The tax is ultimately paid by individuals."
According to Deloitte, the value of its financial auditing work in Australia, including for the private sector, has grown 16 per cent from $225 million a year to $261 million a year. In the same time frame, non-audit services has grown 58 per cent from $949 million a year to $1.5 billion.
