History may record that the BER was less than perfect but not Julia Gillard. There’s no way she’ll cop any blame for it because she’s developed the concept of ministerial non-responsibility into an artform.

Friday Mash is proud to bring you the first indepth analysis of Julia’s state-of-the-art technique and why it poses the most serious threat ever to the Westminster system of ministerial responsibility.

The first step is to sheet home the essential blame. The global financial crisis was apparently all the fault of George W Bush aided and abetted by John Howard and the parlous state of Australian education was solely the fault of John Howard. If these two had never been elected Australia would already be living in a Labor nirvana enriched by the BER insulated by an ETS.

Then at a stroke Julia saved Australia from the GFC by persuading Kevin to spend sixteen billion dollars on school buildings and calling it an education revolution. And to make a revolution work it has to be as revolting as possible and an eternally grateful nation should understand that it doesn’t matter how the revolutionary money’s spent as long as it goes around.

Then comes the genius bit. Having seen Peter Garrett drive everyone batty Julia realised that the federal government hadn’t got an BP’s chance in the Gulf of Mexico of effectively managing a sixteen billion dollar schools building programme so she decided to let the state governments do it.

Obviously the state governments would stuff it up too but someone other than a GFC hero and future prime minister needed to take the blame.

Even more genius stuff followed. She appointed the Building the Education Revolution Implementation Task Force to confirm the standing of state governments as incompetent rorters. And there’s no danger the Task Force will probe too much because after they’ve introduced themselves there’s no time left for asking embarrassing questions.

Having heroically saved the country from the GFC it was entirely inappropriate for Julia to get involved in questions like whether the rorting of covered outside learning areas was an inside job, are the lower building costs in catholic schools an act of God and are million dollar toilet blocks flushed with money?

Naturally Julia only accepts photo opportunities at schools who are thrilled with their new COLAs and don’t give a rats about what they cost.

Schools where parents and teachers are outraged by rorting and bizarre buildings have to be avoided at all costs. There’s a danger that visits to those places could cause a revolution.

Yet another masterstroke from Julia. She described the BER as a learning experience for her. Academics believe that at sixteen billion this is the world’s most expensive on-the-job training course ever and so far it doesn’t seem to have worked.

If Peter Garrett had applied Julia’s techniques to his insulation programme, instead of being burned by all those roof fires he would now be basking in their rosy glow.

So Julia has saved both the country and herself. Moreover when they’re dealing with a mining revolution and an insulation revolution you can’t expect a government to take an education revolution all that seriously.

But now that we’ve been saved from the GFC who on earth is going to save us from Julia and the BER?