In which the pond floods the internet with Caterist follies ...

Good old Barners has even become the butt of reptile jokes - thank the long absent lord he never made it to the top of loon pond, and the onion muncher still holds on …

Speaking of classic reptile jokes …

Would you buy a flood folly story from a Caterist, and then put it at the top of the digital page?

It goes without saying it takes a singular ability to ignore the facts and to head way back to the days of former Chairman Rudd, and "censor everything" Conroy, as if Malware and his mob have had nothing to do with Malware's NBN folly, but that's what the Caterist is paid to do … thanks to a nifty supply of cash in the paw from the federal government …

As for ignoring the facts, the pond regrets it never did catch up with that court action … though this in the Graudian here is a salutary reminder of the Caterists' relationship to the facts, following news from barrister Tom Blackburn that Cater had left out, in correspondence with Jones, an interview with Grantham resident Graham Besley that had cast doubt on the Wagners' alleged blame:

Bear in mind that capacity for selective quoting and a desire to structure narratives to suit in what follows:

Yep, as the country gazes out on a mixed media fuck-up of the first water, you won't find a word about it in the Caterist.

And why is that? Well, the pond suspects that with an election looming, there's a fierce desire in the Liberal party to put behind it all talk of Malware's folly, and blame it all on former Chairman Rudd and "censor everything" Conroy …

Ah the glory days … and thanks to Paul Fletcher, we can relive the moments of a lizard Oz op ed from 2015 explaining "Malcolm Turnbull's NBN fix shows why he's Prime Minister":

In delivering this impressive turnaround, the first key feature of Malcolm Turnbull’s approach was to start with a careful analysis of the facts. There was detailed policy work in opposition, and once in government he commissioned the NBN strategic review — a thorough, fact-based analysis of the issues the company faced. 
Next, he oversaw the crafting of a robust strategy — based on the outcomes of the strategic review which found that the best way to deliver higher speeds, quickly, was a combination of fibre to the premises, fibre to the node and cable. 
As minister, Turnbull successfully completed ambitious talks with Telstra and Optus to reshape the poor deals the previous government had done: without this, the NBN could not have used fibre to the node because Labor had not bothered to secure the right to use Telstra’s copper in exchange for the billions that company was to receive. This renegotiation was a very considerable feat — drawing on his experience as a commercial negotiator over many decades. In a political context where successful negotiation with crossbench senators is key to getting legislation passed, negotiating skills of this kind are key.

Oh he fixed it alright, if fixed is taken to mean totally fucked.

There's a lot more horseshit to hand at the link, including talk of Malware's skill at the digital transformation of government - but that was before the DTA turned into a walking dead digital joke …

This piece by Ed Husic ran in the lizard Oz on 14th March 2017:

You have to admit the Turnbull Government certainly knows a thing or two about digital disruption - but based on their track record, none of its good. 

If you cast your mind back over the last 12 months it seems nearly every major government digital transformation or upgrade project has gone off track. 

In a short space of time the digital mess that has heaped up under the Turnbull Government’s watch has been considerable: the Census, the Centrelink robo-debt saga, the crashing of the ATO website and concerns about the future upgrade of the Child Support Agency’s IT system. And all this happened with hardly a scratch of help from the government’s own digital transformation body. 

About the only positive coverage the Turnbull Government’s had regarding digital transformation was the publicity generated over a book the Digital Transformation Assistant Minister Angus Taylor penned on the same subject. 

Why has this project of government digital transformation spectacularly collapsed in the face of self-generated expectation? 

Spearheading this project was a supposedly tech-savvy Prime Minister - aided by an Assistant Minister who was a former management consultant. 

The Opposition offered public support for the move to digitally transform government service delivery. It makes perfect sense that citizens used to using their smartphones to access every other good or service they want should also be able to access government assistance more efficiently. 

With the commitment of those involved combined with an offer of bipartisan support, why is it that all we’ve got to is either digital inertia or debris? 

At the heart of this wayward project is one big problem. It has nothing to do with tech and a lot to do with people. Specifically, it is the way governments empower those people and oversight their actions. Exhibit A, look at the body that is supposed to be managing government digital transformation - the then Digital Transformation Office. 

It was deliberately based outside of Canberra so it could shake up service delivery and bring an outsider’s view on how government could perform better for the public. It brought in some of the youngest, sharpest tech talent to help contribute the reformation effort. 

Yet while making some headway, it seemed oddly distracted with side projects targeting state or territory governments. Only later has it become clear why. The projects it wanted to work on, it couldn’t. For example, progress on one of its biggest projects - GOV.AU which aimed to help consolidate the 1,500 plus government websites into just one portal - ground to a halt after the business case to proceed hit a brick wall when federal cabinet refused to consider the proposal in July. 

Then, late last year, the Turnbull Government announced the radical idea of restructuring the Digital Transformation Office into the Digital Transformation Agency. 

What was not made clear at the time was that a private review into the DTO had been undertaken. What was recommended and what impact it had on the restructure remains a secret. The government hasn’t released the report into the DTO. 

Canberra insiders were drafted in to head up the new DTA and most of its functions gravitated back to the “mothership”: Canberra. 

Besides seeing off its former CEO Paul Shetler (rumoured to have only met with the Assistant Minister twice in six months), the government announced the creation within the DTO of a PMO - the Program Management Office. 

Six months later, in another burst of publicity, the government announced the creation of a Digital Investment Management Office (DIMO). 

Both offices were designed to do the same thing: keep tabs on a significant financial investment of government in digital transformation. 

When asked in Senate Estimates a couple of weeks ago as to why two offices were needed to do the same thing, the government admitted it was the same body, renamed because people are accustomed to the letters PMO referring to the Prime Minister’s Office. 

Seriously. If you can’t name your own offices what hope have you got with the substantially more complex task of government digital transformation? 

The answer: not much. When also quizzed at Estimates about what support it had provided to other government bodies as the Turnbull tech-wrecks piled up, the new DTA admitted it hadn’t been involved. The DTO, the DTA, the PMO and DIMO: all MIA. 

The most energy we’ve seen around government digital transformation is the transformation of the Turnbull Government’s organisational charts - little transformation of organisational outcome. 

In the meantime, and through this distraction, we’ve seen digital project after digital project stumble or fail. 

What is becoming clear is - like most things with the Turnbull Government - it’s all talk, little action. And it seems there is a massive internal brawl happening where major public sector players have banded together to resist digital transformation. 

Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull used to speak with pride that the pet project he created - the DTO - was leading an insurgency within government. 

But now - under his watch - his pet has been de-barked. Less insurgent, more lap-dog. And the forgotten victims are the public - made to suffer through poor or failing government service delivery

But in all these follies, the pond almost forgot it was looking at more modern Caterist horseshit ...

And that's why you don't want a Caterist commenting on the causes of a flood. 

The pond is too tired to argue with the stupidity of hooking everything to wireless/satellite, and a man who made a joke about connected dishwaters turning to connected tractors for a winning argument …

The idea of selling everything to the highest bidder is what the Department of Finance cash in the paw man is really all about … remember to socialise the losses and scoop up the cheap assets …

And what do you know, suddenly the Caterist can see some value for his mates ...

Sure, it's another example of egregious stupidity at work, as if everybody is going to ditch their home connectivity and do it via the phone, or perhaps, needing a bigger screen, a tablet, but the pond did warn everyone about buying a used flood from a Caterist …

And so to another matter, which involved the pond imagining it was reading an entirely different newspaper ...

This just didn't seem right, and the pond thought it should offer it to specialist reptile handlers as a sign of hope … perhaps the lizard Oz's relentless focus on religious freedom and the suffering of Xians had been given a rest and sanity might prevail, at least for a nanosecond …

Sadly, of course, the pond was actually reading an entirely different newspaper … 

It had been recycled and rebadged … seemingly designed to send the usual Oz fundamentalists into a twitter-trolled frenzy ...

The only astonishing thing is that the reptiles felt the need to pick up this piece, presumably to offer some coverage of recent events in Ireland ...

Well yes, but don't imagine the local reptiles in the Catholic Boys' Daily will pay any attention to this idle talk of theocracies … 

We'll quickly be back to the lizard Oz blathering on endlessly about religious freedom, and the right of theocrats to persecute and prohibit and abuse down under…

Thank the long absent lord there are other, better forms of comedy to enjoy, including David Rowe celebrating a certain Bruce taking up the offer to phone in, with more Rowe here ...