Don't touch that rock!

In Australia, everything can kill you. Spiders, snakes, sea creatures. 

Even the platypus is poisonous.
 
So you learn fairly quickly not to go turning over rocks just in case you find something nasty.
 
An Australian precaution has seems to have been taken to heart by the powers that be in Guernsey.
 
Why?
 
Well, let's look at the recent record.
 
Education - After years of being told that our education system was better than the UK, the truth comes out because someone turns over a rock and a huge reorganisation has to take place with loss of face and (too) limited loss of jobs.
 
Population - A deferred census because what’s under that rock might be very scary indeed. A proposed rehash of the housing laws to try and impose some form of population control which won’t offend the EU but still gives no real control on who is allowed in and who stays. Better to leave that rock where it is thank you.
 
Economy - Still a one horse race even though the horse seems under increasing threat from the wider world. Definitely not an area to start turning over any rocks unless outside pressure forces some action.
 
Housing - Price bubble still floating higher and higher. Too few affordable homes and too many investment properties. Too many powerful vested interests with their foot pressing down on the rock, happy to leave things just as they are while the profits keep coming in.
 
Environment - too many cars, too much rubbish, too little effective planning. A recycling strategy which didn’t involve the parishes in its planning and so looks likely to fail before it starts because nobody worked out how to pay for it or make it work. Can we dig out some more rocks please so we can then fill the holes in with more rubbish?
 
Health - Needs a bigger budget each year and still can’t run properly. Organises recruiting drives abroad just before local student nurses qualify. Does’t appear to be getting great value for money from the contacts it has issued to the private sector but doesn’t seem bothered. Management accused of being distant but nobody seems worried. And then somebody turns over a rock revealing the problems with A&E. Didn’t they know that rock was clearly confidential and definitely not to be moved?
 
Culture - Can’t run a leisure centre but willing to lease it for profit elsewhere. No apparent strategy for promoting arts in the Island despite a huge arts community. Very happy to leave all rocks in place and to pay for some new one’s up in Alderney but of course that’s art and so worth paying for something which is built to deteriorate.

Nobody wants to start turning over any more rocks. Not even if it’s someone else’s department. After all, they could return the favour and try to turn over some of your rocks and politically, some of those rocks might end up killing you. Best leave things as they are. Stay away from the rocks and what you can’t see won’t hurt you.

Some call this the Ostrich approach and it must work because not many ostriches are killed in Australia are they?