By CHRIS CATASTROPHE, ACT Minister for Renewable Mistakes

I think we can all agree that there has been way too much coverage of the expensive corruption saga at the Canberra Institute of Technobabble. 

As a dab hand at unfolding disasters, I can assure you that the best thing to do is to forget what happened and move on. And certainly, don’t let it all come flooding back to you when you are in the ballot box in October. 

Look, the CIT is not the same as it was back when crazy mountaineers and gullible school teachers were running the place. 

For starters, we don’t outsource to consultants any more. No, we’ve brought all our wanky advice in-house now, with cupping-rooms of expensive suits filling up what were once CIT classrooms. We need these shiny-bums to keep in line the old grumble-bum teachers, who still persist in doing things like teaching students practical skills. 

What these recalcitrant teachers don’t realise is that we are living in the 21st century. In a world increasingly dominated by AI, who needs hands-on trades that only humans can perform? I mean, why repair a car when you can buy a new one from the robot factory in China? And why train local mechanical engineers when some cool hombres from Spain can run you up a sexy bit of tram track for a lazy billion or two? 

No, today’s CIT is focused on more modern courses that better meet the future demands of the ACT job market. Skills such as cooking up ACT government thought bubbles – Soufflé de Réflexions – under our new CIT culinary course. Or our new carpentry course, Nailing the Easy Life, where you can learn how to earn up to a million dollars by being found guilty by the ACT Integrity Commission. 

Many will have already seen our reforms in action with the current bake-sale CIT students are running to fund their course work. We think it’s good to keep students lean and hungry. After all, we got nowhere splashing money on dual CEOs and all of their pricey perks. 

To ensure it all goes tickety-boo into the future, we have appointed an extra-large board to look the other way when things next go wrong. The new board is headed up by the former Labor minister, Kate Lump. Yes, yes, I know. Our Kate was the CIT deputy chair when all of the ahem went down. But it’s not her fault. She just wasn’t wearing the right glasses on the day. 

Assisting Our Kate is the new Deputy-Chair, Sally Seatwarmer. Sally has been a head-honcho in various ACT government departments for years, so knows a thing or two about how we like things here. Then there’s the current CIT CEO, Betty Baffled, who we pay a fortune to fly up every week from Melbourne. Lucky Betty is both the CEO and a board member, so she gets to oversee her own performance! 

Plus, there’s the umpteen others such as Hyphena Dash-Minus-Sign. She runs the boutique consultancy, Thought Orchard, which provides “trusted insights and advice to guide internal and external strategies that build better positioning.” Couldn’t be more different than that meaningless Think Garden blather. 

So, you see, there’s nothing to worry about with the CIT! You have the Chris Catastrophe promise! 

Now, I need to go, as I have more pressing things to deal with. Like the 94 electric buses I promised for 2023. And the single $1.5 million electric fire-engine we got custom-built in Germany, that apparently is useless. Not to mention the $77 million our guys bungled on that dud HR system. Then what to do with the Hume recycling plant that suddenly blew up. Oh, and I think I said a few years ago, I’d do something about Kambah Village, didn’t I? And, bugger, those cost blow-outs with the tram…

Phew! So many complicated wide-ranging challenges. I’m going to have to employ a seriously expensive Complexity and Systems Thinker to get through all of this before the election!