Ok , an ex-politician. But even among ex-politicians, how many admit to being partly responsible for wasting billions of taxpayers’ dollars, as former Hamer and Kennett government minister Rob Maclellan does in The Age his morning?

The sources of this waste are Alcoa aluminium smelters near Geelong and in Portland, a Victorian coastal town. By the time current contracts expire The Age estimates that these smelters will have received $4.5 billion in electricity subsidies.

As Maclellan now concedes, ever agreeing to this arrangement was a ‘collective moment of insanity’ around the cabinet table. There are many such moments, but at least Maclellan is, albeit far too late to do anything about it, admitting to this one.