#underdeliver

The engineer’s estimate

-A formula for success I try to keep out of trouble at work as much as possible. I do so for many reasons, chief among them being because I far prefer being praised to being yelled at. There is a relatively simple way to achieve this; make your promises rarely and in such a fashion that you have leeway if something should go wrong, and then follow up on it.I don’t mean to say that you should be…

Considering that we're only two weeks out from the release of the budget, do you think that the brief to the Commission of Audit may have been to release a report so heinous & despicable, that it would generate a massive outcry from as many areas of the community as possible?

So while we're all distracted by our fury at the possible decimation of our wonderful country should the LNP actually implement all of the recommendations of the Commission of Audit, they can just slip the budget through, to little fuss.

They'll still be giving us the shaft and we'll thank them for it and smile and breath a sigh of relief. Because it could have been SOOOO much worse, right?

Less than two weeks out, what are the real chances that this government is going to make wholesale changes to the budget now? Although, they seem only to happy to make complex budget decisions on the fly where not changing course would make them seem like complete assholes.  Like right after the election when they said they were going to scrap Gonski. "No, we never said that. And now the Australian public have given us a mandate to do whatever we want, regardless of pre-election promises"

"What's that? You have recorded evidence of what we said?  Oh, but what we meant was.... Shit. Caught out. And we haven't had time to demand a media gag on all discussions of operational matters yet"

And then weathered a backlash of people who called them out for their pre-election promise to honour the existing arrangement.  They squirmed and tried slither around that one, but eventually capitulated. Apparently that was all part of their plan but within days had been able to concoct another plan. Which had always been part of their plan.

All this hubbub about the Commission of Audit report is most likely a distraction.  It's designed to create the maximum anxiety in as much of the community as possible.

That way on budget night, when we're finding out that the government is fucking us, it's not nearly as hard & as vicious as we expected.

So when you go to sleep tonight, think about Joe Hockey gently stroking our collective backs, whispering into our collective ears, his hot breath on our collective necks:

"See? That didn't hurt so bad. If you'd just relax, you might even get to like it. You know I love you, but sometimes you just get me so mad. I still think you're pretty. Besides you know you had this coming. We all have to share in the heavy lifting. Now for fuck's sake, go have a shower and clean yourself up. You make me sick"