WHEW - they signed it.
Obviously, there was always a bit of anxiety about whether all those premiers would ever agree to that $42 billion worth of free stuff. But they did - and did you ever see a happier little bunch of vegemites?
In the old days, the premiers' conference tended to be a heavily orchestrated display of flounce-out. Yesterday, it resembled nothing so much as an episode of Supermarket Sweep, as the state and territory leaders zoomed about joyfully, piling their trolleys high with federally funded loot.
Schools, roads, railway wigwags - there was a lot of offer, and they gobbled it up.
Even the lonely Liberal Premier, Western Australia's Colin Barnett, had to make a visible effort to look sheepish as he joined the scramble for the Rudd billions. There was
much excited talk of partnerships, roll-outs and "shovel-ready projects".
There are to be staged deliveries and a whole network of co-ordinators-general linking hands across this wide broke land. Kevin Rudd held court passionately and unintelligibly for several minutes on the details of the administration structure. It seems that after a spot of light benchmarking, most of these projects are in fact shovel ready.
In his enthusiasm for the $14.7 billion he is spending on school buildings, the Prime Minister announced - all in the space of a single sentence - that he would be rolling his sleeves up, cracking heads
AND knocking skulls in the weeks ahead.
Those poor children!
The Victorian Premier, John Brumby, was especially ebullient. He declared many of his projects to be "site procured, community consulted and ready to go".
"We haven't had such good news … since the last COAG meeting" he grinned.
The South Australian leader, Mike Rann, was also very enthusiastic, and proudly announced plans to stage his own summit of school principals and administrators.
Ten minutes of this carry-on is enough to bring on distinct feelings of violent shovel readiness in the average observer, but we have to forgive these state and territory leaders. They are having a lovely, lovely, crisis.
There was near silence when the nine leaders signed their nine copies of the agreement. After some initial confusion, it was agreed that each leader should sign the agreement in front of him or her, then pass it to the leader on their immediate right for further inscription.
At the far end of the road sat Councillor Geoff Lake, a charming-looking adolescent who was there representing local government.
Cr Lake didn't get either a pen or an agreement, so he simply busied himself handing the completed sheets to an attendant, like a helpful diner clearing his own table.
And the Prime Minister saw what he had created, and he found it to be good.
Source: smh.com.au
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