If his credibility wasn't in tatters after the OzCar affair, Treasury official Godwin Grech's critique could have been devastating for the Federal Government.
''Just as the global financial crisis got into full swing, it soon became clear that Treasury officers were being asked to prepare policy option papers on highly complex and economically significant issues at a speed that was, in my view, dangerous,'' Grech said in statement to the Auditor-General.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Treasurer Wayne Swan and Treasury secretary Dr Ken Henry would meet in the morning.
Policy papers were commissioned.
The trio would get together again within 24 hours and make decisions involving billions of dollars in actual expenditure or in contingent liabilities.
''There was little, if any testing of alternative options, with often only rubbery estimates or forecasts prepared to support possible approaches,'' according to Grech.
The line of attack has been echoed during a week when we learned that Queensland Premier Anna Bligh took delivery of chicken meat as she prepares to compete in Celebrity MasterChef. Doesn't she have a state to run?
Family First Senator Steve Fielding came across as a goose when he spoke about ''physical policy'' when he meant ''fiscal''. He compounded the blunder when he tried to correct himself ''I'll make it quite clear: fiscal, F-I-S-K-A-L'' before blaming a ''learning difficulty'' for the gaffe.
And the ''Primary Schools for the 21st Century'' program was dubbed a turkey by the Opposition, which has finally found some succulent morsels to use against the Government.
Under the $16.2billion initiative, schools receive up to $3million each to construct or upgrade buildings as part of the plan to help stimulate economic activity and stave off disaster amid the global financial crisis.
The Opposition's key and valid concerns centre on the $1.7billion blow-out in the cost and claims of ''systemic rorting''.
Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne points to ''profiteering'' by business, ''skimming'' by the states and ''waste and bad management'' by education departments at both levels of Government. The Opposition has produced a series of examples to support its claims.
One school will receive $2.5million to demolish four classrooms and replace them with four new ones.
Another school has been allocated $250,000 to build a library when it has one student and faces the prospect of closure.
A third case involves an architect who charged $112,000 for two days' work to produce concept drawings according to reports, two of them were the same and a third was a design that already existed for another school.
If the Opposition's claims are proved correct, taxpayers should be outraged over the misuse of their funds and should blame the Commonwealth for failing to take a firmer hold of the purse strings.
The Government has recently revised guidelines for the school building program, inserting a ''value for money'' clause for the first time.
This should have been a requirement from the outset.
Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard has vowed to investigate complaints about the scheme but is usually sceptical about the veracity of claims made by her political opponents.
Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull demands to know what cost-benefit analysis was undertaken for the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program.
None, is the short answer from Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner.
This would be gross mismanagement under routine circumstances, but the situation was hardly normal when the Government devised its stimulus package.
''We received advice from the Secretary of Treasury and other Treasury officials that a huge storm was about to hit the Australian economy and that it was necessary to get money into the Australian economy inject it into the Australian economy in a variety of ways as quickly as possible to sustain hundreds of thousand of jobs and thousands of businesses,'' Tanner said.
It was imperative to act urgently and decisively in a bid to help shield Australia from the worst global economic downturn since the Second World War.
But the storm has started to ease and it's time to reflect on whether the umbrella was effective.
Two senate committees have launched inquiries.
Henry, Reserve Bank governor Glenn Stevens and eminent independent economists will be invited to give evidence to the economics committee, which will look at stimulus initiatives including the efficacy of spending, the costs and benefits, and the impact on interest rates.
The committee will consider whether the roll-out should be altered given the changing economic circumstances and report back in three weeks.
The education committee will investigate the school component including the conditions and criteria for project funding, the use of local and non-local contractors, role of state governments, timing and budget issues and requirements for plaques and signs to trumpet the investment.
The Government has been forced to alter the billboards at schools which double as polling stations during elections after the Australian Electoral Commission warned the signs could be considered political advertising.
It's an embarrassing turn of events and bolsters Opposition claims that the Labor Government is using the stimulus spending to try to ''buy the election''.
The Opposition is also keen to portray Gillard as overloaded.
In question time, Opposition frontbenchers stress each element of her cumbersome title Deputy Prime Minister, the Minister for Employment, Workplace Relations, Education and Social Inclusion.
Their goal is to create the impression that Gillard has too many portfolios and can't possibly cope. It very well could be the case for a politician with a weaker work ethic and less smarts.
There have been a series of problems in her portfolio area the controversy over changes to the youth allowance and the delivery of programs under the ''education revolution'' to name just two. Given the size of the schools building program, there will inevitably be issues with the roll-out. Gillard deserves criticism if she creates or fails to fix them.
Danielle Cronin is Political Correspondent.
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