Forget the Age of Aquarius – yes, stop humming that annoying tune – it’s really the Age of Incompetence. You have to admit that incompetence is everywhere. There is a complete lack of attention to detail, a failure to plan and an absence of accountability.

If it’s not Flossie, the tunneller, bogged under metres of mud in the Kosciuszko National Park, it’s the renovation of the North Sydney swimming pool. If it’s not the West Gate Tunnel project in Melbourne, it’s 500,000 homes in Victoria losing power because of a relatively minor storm.

But of course, it’s not just confined to civil engineering and energy projects. It’s in nearly all aspects of life, both private and public. I recall needing to replace a credit card and being told that it would be sent to my nearest bank. Fine, I thought, only the card was sent to a branch in Sydney even though I live in Melbourne. There was no explanation given, only delay.

I was reminded of the indisputable reality about pervasive incompetence when we got to our beach place just before Christmas. It’s relatively newly constructed and we make a big effort to maintain it. We quickly turned on the air-conditioning because of the unduly warm weather. A major puddle formed below the unit, leading us to stop using it.

Understandably, this is not a good time for something to go wrong. We managed to get an AC person to come over, who informed us that the drainage tubes had effectively disintegrated and would need to be replaced. It turns out that when the AC was originally installed, the contractor decided to save a few bob on these tubes and opted for a clearly inferior, but cheaper, type.

But it gets worse. There was no way to replace the pipes without cutting holes in the plasterboard. That’s right, no one had ever thought about access for repair work. We quickly ended up with a working AC unit and hideous holes in the wall. Because plasterers don’t grow on trees, particularly for relatively small jobs, it took some time to get the holes filled in and the whole wall repainted. Needless to say, this last stage cost a whole lot more than repairing the AC tubes.

I’ve been following the story about the refurbishment of the North Sydney public pool for some time. Located on a magnificent site, it has been delay after delay, repeated cockups and a massive escalation in the cost.

It was originally going to cost around $60 million; it has now blown out to over $100 million. It is literally years behind schedule.  Some sort of steel-framed edifice was constructed but it was judged to be defective and has now been pulled down. I’m sure Speccie readers have plenty of examples of local government projects gone seriously awry.

Don’t you love the New South Wales government under Chris Minns going full bottle on promoting more high-rise apartment blocks while the cluster of ones built ten years or so ago continue to cause ongoing problems in terms of major defects? In one instance, all the residents had to be evacuated and the government is now providing derisory compensation so the building can be on-sold.

And did I mention the cladding issue which is not entirely resolved? It’s a bit like our tubes, but on a major scale. The developers decided to cut corners by sourcing cheaper Chinese-made cladding, even though it is highly flammable. It is also prone to simply fall off buildings. No one has bothered to count the cost of the remediation work, which is still ongoing, but it’s in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Apartment owners have been hit with financial calls to cover the cost; the taxpayer has also chipped in.

Victoria’s Big Build program has been an ongoing fiasco, with massive cost blow-outs and seemingly permanent delays caused by the construction. Getting rid of the railway boom gates at various busy intersections was a good idea and initially their removal seemed to work well. Over time, these projects have become more grandiose and have taken more time.

The West Gate Tunnel project was meant to cost around $5 billion; it is now at least $15 billion and who knows when it will be finished. There was a major delay caused by the issue of where the contaminated soil would be offloaded, something that was completely foreseeable. (The works run through previous industrial areas.)

But Victoria’s Treasurer simply declares that cost overruns on large projects are common and the opposition fails to land a glove on one of the most profligate and incompetent administrations in the country.

The most alarming area of incompetence relates to our defence capability – both procurement and manufacture. That ex-politician who accurately suggested that we couldn’t be relied on to build a canoe let alone a submarine was definitely on the money.

It turns out that we have a navy with very few working ships, let alone sailors to sail them. We have a ship-building program but who knows where that’s at. These ships need to be appropriately armed but there is a clear failure on that score. The brass is very good at commissioning reports, but just not so good at achieving anything to boost our defence capabilities.

Defence Minister Richard Marles thinks it’s great to use military aircraft to ferry him back to Geelong and to play golf. It’s just when it comes to the main game of ensuring that the defence of the country is in good shape that he seems to lose interest. On the other hand, Australia might be in the running for some sort of Diversity and Inclusiveness award for the defence forces.

And here’s a little story about incompetence that really gave me a good chuckle. Ministerial and Parliamentary Services in Canberra decided to send out an email to all the staff working in Parliament House.  The heading was: Automatic Termination of Employment.

Now if you received such an email, it would be fair to assume that you had been fired. But no, the email was about some minor changes to the conditions attached to employment ‘in the event of termination’.  It was perfectly understandable that some recipients of the emails, particularly the young’uns, would feel a wee bit upset.

So two hours later, Ministerial and Parliamentary Services sent out another email, explaining that no one’s employment had actually been terminated. ‘The subject line used for this email was poorly worded and may have led to the advice being interpreted by some individuals as a notification of the termination of employment. We sincerely apologise for any the distress (sic) this may have caused and have taken this feedback on board to ensure future communications are as clear as possible.’

Will anything happen to the person – or was it a committee? – who sent out this email? Will their employment be automatically terminated?  We all know the answer.

On reflection, humming that annoying tune is a better bet than thinking about incompetence and the pervasive lack of common sense.