The thing they have in common is that you or I could essentially write them, without recourse to hours of tedious hearings or millions spent on research, junketing and the photocopying bill.
Australia's blessed National Audit Office has released such a report and its findings amount to the quite astounding non-news that the John Howard government's regional projects fund has been essentially nothing more or less than a means of ante-poll rewarding those who vote the Right Way.
For all their bucks invested in the investigatory process the Aussie Taxpayer has learned that there has been "political interference, disregard for rules and guidelines and a lack of transparency". Well gee, fancy that.
All the money spent on this exercise has produced the remarkable news that there was a "surge" in grant approvals just before the 2004 election date was announced. Would you have imagined it?
Emblematic of the general aura of maladministration exposed in the report is the behaviour of DeAnne Kelly, the then parliamentary secretary for regional services who, over a 51 minute period in the two hour period before the government assumed Pre-election caretaker status, displayed quite extraordinary and hitherto unheralded heroism in signing through sixteen grants to the total value of a rather nifty $3.5m. How awesome is that?
Bet it never crossed your mind that politicians could behave in such a manner. Thankfully though, we've got grossly overpaid, unelected relatively anonymous officials to junket about the country Club Class, stay in five star hotels and write hundreds of pages of drivel telling us all what we already knew and could have set out on the back of a fag packet in the room still left after all the health warnings are taken into account.
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