A Victory For Yes PM Gillard, Orwell and Quigley's Forecasts.
First it was refusal to accept there was a need for a cost - benefit analysis or even a basic business - plan.
Then the multi - spin about all those anticipated profits based on projected customers.
When yesterday the NBN Co's Chief forced to admit they got the forecasts wrong - blame delays of the roll out.
How much more idiotic scandalous wastage and low - quality spin will Senator Conroy get away with before people who could use $50 billion on medical services march on his office?
How many lives could be saved with a mere fraction of this scandalous waste?
We must be rid of these incompetents: they have plainly lied to Parliament so many times.
A sacking offence, Governor General, even if your nephew is a participant!
James Hacker: Foreign affairs are a complicated business, aren't they?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Yes, indeed, Prime Minister. That's why we leave it to the Foreign Office.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: East Yemen, isn't that a democracy?
Sir Richard Wharton: Its full name is the Peoples' Democratic Republic of East Yemen.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Ah I see, so it's a communist dictatorship.
Sir Richard Wharton: But there's a group of Marxist guerrillas in the mountains somewhere. And we're getting reports that they're planning a coup.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh well, these things will happen.
Sir Richard Wharton: If the PM gets into one of his ghastly patriotic Churchillian moods, he may intervene. All that pro-British, defending democracy nonsense.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Oh, I know, I know.
Sir Richard Wharton: He must understand that once you start interfering in the internal squabbles of other countries, you're on a very slippery slope. Even the Foreign Secretary's grasped that.
James Hacker: Foreign affairs are a complicated business.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: That's why we leave it to the Foreign Office.
Bernard Woolley: The PM seems to be completely in the dark.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Excellent. Anything else?
Bernard Woolley: Well, I wondered if there was anything he doesn't know?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, I hardly know where to begin, Bernard.
Bernard Woolley: What if he demands options?
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Well, it's obvious, Bernard. The Foreign Office will happily present him with three options, two of which are, on close inspection, exactly the same.
Sir Richard Wharton: Plus a third which is totally unacceptable.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Like bombing Warsaw or invading France.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: I gather that there's an airborne battalion in the air.
James Hacker: Sounds like the right place for it.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: You know what happens when politicians get into Number 10; they want to take their place on the world stage.
Sir Richard Wharton: People on stages are called actors. All they are required to do is look plausible, stay sober, and say the lines they're given in the right order.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Some of them try to make up their own lines.
Sir Richard Wharton: They don't last long.