This week's admission by police that tickets were wrongly issued to about 20,000 motorists is without doubt one of the leaders in this year's automotive stupidity awards.
It won't win - Australia's embarrassingly short-sighted farewell to its car manufacturing industry is a shoo-in for number one. The devastation in terms
of jobs and car industry strength will be huge, no matter which carefully chosen words the politicians utter.
Many Aussies believe government support - whichever form it may take - should never have existed. But it is how it works, globally.
The so-called patriots essentially allowed two Australian icons to fall over and failed to protect jobs that aren't going to be easy to replace.
New Zealand's car industry, on the other hand is cranking along, with many distributors reporting record months for January. It is possible to survive the collapse of manufacturing, but there are far more pleasant ways to do good business and keep people gainfully employed. Ask Germany.
