Why should taxpayers bear the consequences of professional advice that proves catastrophically wrong, while those who provided it walk away?
Imagine commissioning an engineer to design a bridge. You pay a substantial fee, confident that the engineer has the qualifications, experience and professional judgement to do the job.
The bridge is built. It collapses. People are killed.
Would we shrug our shoulders and say that engineering is complicated, nobody can predict everything, and perhaps we should learn some lessons for next time?
Of course not.
There would be investigations. Questions about the calculations, materials, assumptions and safety margins. If negligence were established, the engineer could face substantial financial liability, professional sanctions and, in sufficiently serious circumstances, criminal prosecution.
And rightly so.
So why do we appear to apply a different standard to other experts whose advice can affect thousands, even millions, of people?
A $166,000 report that couldn't add up
Consider the latest embarrassment involving Deloitte, one of the world's largest professional consulting firms.
The Western Australian government commissioned a $166,000 feasibility report examining possible university mergers.
The report contained extraordinary financial discrepancies. In one scenario, figures adding up to $659 million were presented as $399 million—a difference of $260 million.
There were also apparently AI-generated references, including one containing ChatGPT metadata.
Deloitte acknowledged using generative AI to assist with aspects of the report. The company has maintained that the errors did not affect the underlying modelling or conclusions.
Perhaps they didn't.
But here's my question: If a consultancy cannot reliably check the arithmetic and references in its own report, why should we trust its more complicated conclusions?
The government is seeking reimbursement. That is a start.
But it raises a much larger question about the responsibilities of professional advisers.
We don't pay experts simply to produce documents. We pay them for their knowledge, judgement, diligence and willingness to stand behind their work.
If the result is wrong because they failed to exercise reasonable professional care, why should their liability end with an apology or a refund?
Snowy 2.0: From $2 billion to $25 billion
Then there is Snowy 2.0.
When this enormous pumped-hydro project was announced in 2017, Australians were told it would cost around $2 billion and begin operating in 2021.
The latest assessment, released in October 2026, puts the target cost at $22.2 billion, with a possible $25 billion outcome. Full commissioning has been pushed back to late 2029.
That's more than twelve times the original publicly announced figure.
Twelve times!
Now, I appreciate that Snowy 2.0 is a technically demanding project. Geological conditions are difficult. Labour and material costs change. Unexpected problems arise.
But surely that is precisely why we employ experts.
We don't need highly paid consultants to tell us how much a project would cost if everything went perfectly. We need them to assess what could go wrong, quantify the risks, provide realistic ranges and tell decision-makers when the uncertainties are too great.
The Australian National Audit Office has identified deficiencies in Snowy 2.0's project governance and risk management, with the financial risks increasingly falling on government.
Politicians certainly bear responsibility. They announce projects, approve expenditure and often have powerful incentives to present attractive cost estimates.
But somebody supplies the numbers.
Who produced the original estimates? What assumptions did they make? What warnings were given? Were those warnings communicated honestly to ministers and the public? And did anyone knowingly present an optimistic scenario as a reliable budget?
These questions deserve answers.
A twelvefold cost increase does not, by itself, prove negligence. But it surely justifies an independent examination of the original advice and the professional standards applied.
If the experts did their jobs properly and politicians ignored their warnings, we should know that too.
Accountability should follow the evidence, wherever it leads.
COVID: When expert advice affected an entire nation
The consequences of questionable expert advice can extend far beyond financial losses.
During COVID, governments relied heavily on epidemiologists, public health officials and other specialists to justify extraordinary restrictions on everyday life.
Businesses closed. Schools shut. Families were separated. People lost jobs, savings and opportunities they could never recover.
Some restrictions undoubtedly helped reduce infections and deaths, particularly when the virus was poorly understood and vaccines were unavailable.
But that cannot be the end of the discussion.
Australia's independent COVID-19 Response Inquiry acknowledged the successes of the early response while identifying serious social, economic and health consequences, including damage to public trust.
The central question is not whether governments should have listened to experts. Of course they should have.
It is whether expert recommendations were subjected to sufficient scrutiny.
Were the benefits of particular restrictions weighed against their wider costs? Were alternative approaches considered? Were assumptions regularly reassessed as evidence changed? Were experts sufficiently candid about uncertainty?
And when restrictions continued long after the original circumstances had changed, who was responsible for demanding a fresh assessment?
There is an important distinction between a decision that proves wrong because circumstances were genuinely unknowable and one that proves wrong because contrary evidence was ignored.
The first is an unavoidable feature of decision-making under uncertainty.
The second may be a failure of professional responsibility.
We need to establish which was which, rather than automatically excusing every mistake as the unavoidable consequence of a crisis.
The problem is incentives
This brings me to what I believe is the heart of the problem.
People respond to incentives.
Suppose you are a consultant preparing a feasibility study for a government project.
You know the minister wants to announce it. You know your client would prefer a favourable assessment. You know a pessimistic report might make you unpopular and jeopardise future contracts.
And you know that if the project eventually costs three times as much as predicted, you are unlikely to suffer any personal consequences.
What incentive do you have to challenge the assumptions aggressively?
Professional pride? Ethics? Reputation?
All important. But are they enough?
Now imagine a different arrangement.
You know that if your estimates are found to have been prepared negligently, you could lose your professional accreditation, face substantial financial liability and suffer serious reputational damage.
If you knowingly falsify evidence or recklessly conceal critical risks, criminal penalties might follow.
Would you be more careful?
Would you insist on independent verification? Document your assumptions? Disclose worst-case scenarios? Refuse to sign off on figures you couldn't defend?
I suspect you would.
And that is precisely the point.
Accountability is not primarily about punishing mistakes after they happen. It is about creating incentives to prevent avoidable mistakes in the first place.
But experts cannot predict the future
There is an obvious objection.
Experts cannot guarantee their forecasts. Economies change. Viruses mutate. Geological surprises happen. Even the most diligent professional can be wrong.
Absolutely.
I am not suggesting that every failed prediction should result in a lawsuit, much less a prison sentence.
That would discourage honest advice and encourage defensive, excessively cautious behaviour.
What I am suggesting is that professional responsibility should depend on the quality and integrity of the work, judged against what was reasonably knowable when the advice was given.
An expert who carefully investigates the evidence, discloses uncertainty, tests alternative scenarios and honestly communicates the risks should not be punished merely because events turn out differently.
But an expert who ignores obvious risks, presents speculation as certainty, fails to perform elementary checks or knowingly supplies misleading figures should face consequences proportionate to the misconduct and resulting harm.
We already recognise such distinctions in engineering, medicine, accounting and other professions.
Why should major public-policy and management advice be treated differently?
What would real accountability look like?
I would like to see several changes.
First, major government projects should require genuinely independent assessment of costs, benefits and risks before political commitments are made.
Second, every major consultancy report should be personally signed and certified by the senior professionals responsible for its conclusions.
Not merely issued under a corporate logo.
The signatories should identify themselves, their qualifications and their responsibilities, and formally certify that the report has been prepared with appropriate professional care, that material assumptions have been tested, and that significant uncertainties have been disclosed.
Their signatures should carry legal and professional consequences.
If serious negligence is subsequently established, those individuals should not be able to hide behind the corporate entity that employed them.
This would not make them guarantors of every forecast. It would make them personally accountable for the professional integrity of the work they have certified.
Imagine how much more carefully a consultant might examine a report if their own name, reputation, professional standing and financial liability were attached to it.
Third, assumptions, uncertainty ranges and significant dissenting opinions should be documented and, wherever possible, publicly available.
Fourth, professional advisers should face meaningful financial and disciplinary consequences where negligence or serious breaches of professional standards are established. Appropriate professional indemnity insurance should be part of the system, not a substitute for personal responsibility.
And finally, deliberate falsification, fraud or sufficiently reckless misconduct causing serious harm should be capable of attracting criminal sanctions, subject to proper investigation and due process.
Not because an expert's forecast was wrong.
Because the expert failed in a duty that society had every right to expect them to fulfil.
Politicians, of course, must also be accountable for decisions they make, particularly when they ignore professional warnings.
The expert's responsibility is to provide competent, honest advice.
The politician's responsibility is to decide what to do with it.
Neither should be able to hide behind the other.
Who carries the risk?
Today, the rewards of expert advice are often private, while the consequences of defective advice fall on the public.
The consultant collects the fee. The politician gets the announcement. The project blows its budget. The taxpayer pays.
Or expert advice underpins a damaging public policy, and those who suffer its consequences are offered little more than an assurance that lessons have been learned.
That is not good enough.
We cannot eliminate uncertainty or punish every honest mistake. But we can demand professional diligence, transparency and accountability.
Make the experts put their names to their work. Make them responsible for the professional standards behind their conclusions. And when serious negligence is established, make the consequences real.
Because accountability does more than punish failure. It changes the incentives that lead to failure in the first place.
We expect that of the engineer who designs a bridge.
Why should we accept anything less from the experts whose advice can cost billions, destroy livelihoods or restrict our freedoms?
Grappy
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