Paying the piper: A critical examination of ACIL Allen's (2016) An Economic Assessment of Recasting Council Boundaries in South Australia

Contemporary public policymaking relies on commissioned work from for-profit consulting companies as a prime source of policy advice. The scholarly literature on the 'externalisation' of policy advice has questioned the analytical rigour of such externalised advice. An embryonic literature on policy externalisation in Australian local government has demonstrated that serious flaws exist in numerous consultant reports. In an effort to contribute to this nascent body of empirical scholarship, this paper critically examines ACIL Allen's (2016) An Economic Assessment of Recasting Council Boundaries in South Australia which prescribes the wholesale amalgamation of South Australian local councils. We show that ACIL Allen (2016) is seriously flawed and its policy prescriptions should thus be treated with caution.