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You know, when P2 (Guru) kicked off this thread, I had expectations of filling up pages with good news, of the best kind; I did.  Which should be a lesson of some sort about expecting that things would improve.

After the Senate and Pel-Air, followed by a Ministerial report by the esteemed Rev. Forsyth and the appointment of a new DAS, even a hardened cynic could be forgiven a little hope, especially with a new board being slowly selected.  This time I thought, we may actually get somewhere which justified the great expense and erased some of the past aberrations.  Call me a mug if you like, but I did hope.

Time slips by, Skidmore banks a quarter million or so and we wait.  Then we wait some more; trying desperately to winnow some wheat from the chaff.  Sense from the rhetoric, facts from the smoke and some future in the mirrors.  I should have seen it coming, in fact I probably did, but the old rose coloured specs did their job.  Soon I thought.

The cruellest of deceptions and like lambs to the slaughter we went along with it all.

Senate recommendations – Nope.
Forsyth recommendations – Nope.
TSBC recommendations – Nope.
Skidmore breath of fresh air – Nope.

Still we waited, but not so quietly for the small, alarming signs that disaster was impending were starting to emerge; and, they did.  One at a time.  Shush old fool I thought, give it a chance, many wrongs to be righted in Sleepy Hollow, it takes time.

Well, the jigs up now, the last disgusting missive from the new boy DAS not only fails to indicate which reforms he has initiated, but dismisses reform as a task for industry to complete.  It seems we are to now give them ideas and suggestions and write law; in our own spare time, gratis and perhaps CASA will consider those ideas.  Skidmore goes to some length to show us that this is no easy task and to point out that really, only the CASA experts, those who have completely and utterly buggered up the job, for going on 25 years now, are the only qualified, competent experts for the job.  Gods know, they’ve had enough practice.

It’s going to be up to Truss and the board to reign in the unfettered arrogance and quell the cynicism now.  The direction Skidmore is taking is wrong and dangerous.  We wanted reform, not bloody wabbits enshrined as hero’s of the more skid than traction era we must now endure.

Argh, FFS – a decent, honest crew would have the Rev. Forsyth purring like a well fed, warm kitten; I wonder if the present crew have unleashed a tiger.  Time will tell I expect.

Toot toot.  Hell the boiler ain’t even warm yet but the steam is building up.

Patience exhausted – exeunt stage left – background noises of coal being furiously hurled into a boiler are heard.