Defence secretary Greg Moriarty wants contract workers to train public service

Mr Moriarty told an Institute of Public Administration Australia event on Thursday he was considering changing the way the department contracts consultants, to ensure they are obligated to train public servants in their skillset.

Though likely a costly move, Mr Moriarty said it would ensure contractors were not just coming onboard to lend their skills to a project but also developing that skillset within the public service itself.

"I'm looking at changing the contracts, so that the contracts say you must train.

"Making that part of the contract, so you're not just maintaining a particular asset or providing project management skills or something, but make it contractually obligated that they develop public servants or public officials to do the same."

"That is hard because that's going to be, that is a significant contractual change which may well, probably, have a cost associated with it.

"But if I need to grow public service competence and capacity, contractual mechanisms, I think, have to be part of that," he said.

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An audit earlier found that the former Morrison government spent $20.8 billion on external labour workers in 2021-22, with the majority of those hires employed by Defence.

The Albanese government has committed to reducing reliance on contractors, by increasing the number of APS staff, and introducing an in-house consulting model.

Mr Moriarty said it "will be difficult" for Defence to deal with the immediate impact but backed the move as "very appropriate ... because [the use of contractors] has gone too far".

"In some areas of my department we have the public servants and military officers, or public officials, they are way outnumbered by our private sector partners," he said.

Mr Moriarty has previously told Senate estimates the department could "do a little better" to cut its multi-billion dollar consulting bill.

"I really feel that there are some core areas where it should only be public officials that are conducting that work," Mr Moriarty said on Thursday.

"Of course we're going to have a blended workforce. We have a very technical workforce where private sector partners are vital to that work. But giving policy advice, giving capability advice, probity, all of those issues, I think really it's essential that work be done by public officials.

"How can I as a leader contribute to that? One is we are centralised now, taken away from our groups and services, the ability to just go out and engage private sector consultants or contractors, because I've got a target and I am going to meet that target and the only way I can be confident of that is to try and centralise it."