By: Barry Soper | Thursday, April 12, 2012 6:00 AM

Those who cannot learn from history, are bound to repeat it. It's a phrase we're all familiar with and it's a phrase we should take notice of, particularly if your business is politics.

But it seems it's fallen on deaf ears with the current crop occupying the Beehive.

When they were last in power, a razor gang was set up, headed by the Darth Vader himself Black Bill Birch, to deal to the public service. When they're strapped for cash the mandarins are usually the sector that feels the squeeze.

Many of those who are turned out on the street, reinvent themselves, setting up consultancies and selling their services at a greatly inflated price back to the Government who taught them the tricks of the trade in the first place.

It happened in the 90s, and it's happening again today as the Beehive looks to cut public service costs under the guise of making it more efficient.

To the great unwashed it's a justifiable way to save money. Trouble is that when complicated policies are put in place, like KiwiSaver, Working for Families and more latterly cutting the tax rates and raising GST, they have to have the bureaucrats to implement them.

Either that, or the Government departments hire consultants to show them how it's done. And that's what's happening at the moment.

Figures compiled show that last year $188 million poured into the pockets of consultants, 11 million more than was spent in Labour's last year in office.

Housing New Zealand spent $20 million on getting outside advice while the Environment Ministry coughed up $15 million to consultants.

To affect change at Foreign Affairs we're told it will cost more than nine million bucks, and the spending goes on.

And while we're talking about history repeating itself, the law's going through to partially sell state assets. It was going down that path that caused the disintegration of Labour in the 80s.

But then history, they say, is nothing but assisted and recorded memory - it seems then that amnesia's the problem here, either that or they're not well read!