In 1786 the renowned Scottish poet Robert Burns published a new volume of his works. The most famous poem in that collection was titled To a Mouse.
There are two lines which I often quote in a political context: ''The best laid schemes of mice and men Gang aft agley.''
The occasion of the poem was a winter scene on a bare Scottish hillside where a field mouse has built her nest and tucked away her little store of grain to keep her alive during the cold winter.
She is settling down for the weeks of sleep when her world is torn apart by the blade of the poet's plough.
I am indebted to the British High Commissioner to Australia, Helen Liddell, for pointing out that we of Scottish ancestry recently celebrated the 250th anniversary of the birth of Robert Burns.
But it was not she who caused me to know those lines about the best-laid schemes of mice and men. I quote those words quite often.
Let me translate them into modern Australian political-speak.
Clever politicians think they have planned some cynical manoeuvre ever so very well but they often find they have kicked an own goal.
I give two recent dates in our political calendar to illustrate my point. They are September 6 last year and the January 17 just past.
Back in July two senior members of the former Howard cabinet resigned their seats in the House of Representatives. They were Mark Vaile (Lyne) and Alexander Downer (Mayo).
In both cases the motivation was greed. But one of the men, Downer, turned out to be lucky while the other has gained his just deserts a party seething at the predictable consequences of his greed.
The Liberal candidate, Jamie Briggs, retained Mayo at the by-election on September 6.
The Greens came close to taking the seat. It was a woeful result for the Liberals but at least they still own this formerly safe seat.
With Briggs now entrenched and the next event a contest at a general election, the pattern of voting will return to normal and Briggs will be re-elected handsomely.
In the case of Lyne, by contrast, the Nationals are still seething at Mark Vaile.
The Independent member for Port Macquarie, Robert Oakeshott, easily won the by-election.
Then the Nationals thought they might win his state seat at that by-election on October 18. They failed so there is now an Oakeshott Independent in the state seat in addition to Oakeshott himself in the federal seat.
And so Vaile's greed has subjected the Nationals to two humiliating defeats.
Vaile's defenders might argue that if he had retired normally in 2010 then Oakeshott would still have won Lyne. I admit that. But in such an event there would not have been a state by-election for Port Macquarie.
I have no doubt the Nationals would have won Port Macquarie at the March 2011 NSW general election. September 6 was also the date of the West Australian state general election.
In that case Labor premier Alan Carpenter called an early election, believing he would catch the Liberal Party on the hop. He failed. What was that line about the best-laid schemes of mice and men?
Carpenter could have been campaigning right now as premier for a normal election next month. Instead of that he is now universally regarded as a failed former premier.
In late November last year another failed former premier, Liberal Rob Kerin of South Australia, resigned his seat of Frome in the state's House of Assembly.
The main town in Frome is Port Pirie, a Labor town if ever there was one.
But there is a substantial rural portion to the seat, making it likely the Liberals would usually win. In the Clare and Gilbert valleys in the south, the Liberals win huge majorities of the vote.
Kerin's stated reasons for resigning the seat were the usual unconvincing collection of cliche{aac}s masking the obvious real reason once again, greed.
But he thought, and his party also thought, that the Liberal candidate, Terry Boylan, would win the by-election easily enough.
They were wrong.
A local candidate, Port Pirie Mayor Geoff Brock, ran as an Independent and won.
Brock is the sort of member who is likely to go on winning now that he is the incumbent.
I do not believe he would have won Frome if Kerin had simply retired at the expiration of his term in March next year.
It was the fact that a by-election was created which enabled Brock to become the member.
Finally there is another recent case of greed. The multimillionaire Evan Thornley was a Labor member for the Southern Metropolitan Region in Victoria's Legislative Council.
There are five members for the region two Labor, two Liberals and one for the Greens.
Thornley was on the verge of being a minister in John Brumby's Government but he decided to walk away.
While the Labor Party is seething at Thornley (as the Nationals are at Vaile and the Liberals at Kerin) they can, at least, comfort themselves by reflecting on the mechanism for replacing him.
His replacement will be appointed to the seat by the Labor Party's national executive.
The sheer convenience to the party machines that comes from the appointment process in cases like these explains why I am not keen on electoral systems that eliminate by-elections.
Members of Parliament should be elected by the people.
If that results in embarrassing miscalculations, then so be it.
Malcolm Mackerras is a visiting fellow at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of NSW at the Australian Defence Force Academy.