Past perfect - public demands flawless execution

It’s a spiral of hysteric discontent. To sanction the impossibility of a carefree Utopia risks exacerbating the despair and resentment, while not doing so contributes to irrational over-reaching, reactive and wasteful decision-making and an undue focus on box-ticking that only compromises performance by devaluing personal responsibility. 

We of course opt for the latter, insisting politicians assuage our neurotic state by pretending to be on top of things. 

In a further irony, it will not only be SEQ Water who pays the price for such a craven choice.

We bitch shamelessly about filling in forms, the impersonal nature of modern life, that no-one is willing to trust anyone these days, without realising that the hated dead hand of bureaucracy is the indirect result of populist political inertia, the misguided belief that Shit Happens can be vanquished by simply privileging doing something over doing nothing.

The essence of the ongoing case against SEQ Water relates to – wait for it – paperwork that was inconsistent and completed after the event. 

Guess what happens next flood? Those at the coalface will, understandably, relay all key decisions back to government bureaucrats. As disaster looms, the engineers will take a breather to carefully draft their memos to the satisfaction of Hedley Thomas and ambulance-chasing lawyers.

There is no operating manual in the universe capable of pre-empting the appropriate response to the climatic events of January 2011 in South-Wast Queensland. There is always a context and the formalities, in the end, effectively useless. The experts must make judgment calls, which may or may not be anticipated by the regulations.

Yes, accepting this does leave the system open to abuse. But isn’t this preferable to continuing to drive ourselves into a more cold-hearted, horrifying version of chaos than that which felled Mr Qyra, one where progress is soul-destroyingly inane, being accountable is someone else’s job and the truth is whatever serves our immediate agenda?

Either accept Shit Happens, and deal with its implications, or keep heading up Shit Creek by living out a lie.