Finance Minister Mathias Cormann has been caught out wasting billions of dollars on expensive management, business and consultancy services at the same time as he lectures middle Australia about the need to rein in spending on health care, pensions and higher education.

New revelations in The Australian today show just how much money the Turnbull Government wastes on work which could in some cases be done by public servants at less cost to taxpayers.

Australian families will be appalled to learn just how many billions of dollars of their taxes go not to better services or a more effective public service, but to increasing bills for external providers of management and lobbying advice.

This Turnbull Government is so incompetent it has found a way to spend much more on an inferior outcome.

Between 2013-14 and 2016-17 spending on consultancies, management advisory, risk management, lobbying services, project planning, marketing, branding and more all multiplied, according to data available on the Government’s own AusTender web site.

Approximately $2.2b more was spent on these categories of tender in 2016-17 than in the last full year of the Labor Government.

No wonder debt is at record highs and growing on Mathias Cormann’s watch.

The Turnbull Government’s blunt public service headcount cap comes at the cost of building higher and rising consultancy and labour hire fees into the Budget.

This is a very worrying and expensive development which the Turnbull Government has gone to great lengths to hide, refusing even basic requests to learn more about the problem.

These revelations about billions of dollars wasted on management consultants at the cost of investment in health and education show why Australians aren’t wrong to think Malcolm Turnbull and Mathias Cormann are part of the most out of touch Government we’ve ever had.