You can't handle the truth about Victoria's secret school cuts
Knowing he would be interrogated about his government's unannounced decision to delay by three years extra money public schools need to deliver the Gonski reforms, Carroll could either fess up or maintain the charade.
A part of him felt like channelling Colonel Nathan Jessup, Jack Nicholson's scene-stealing character in A Few Good Men. Colonel Carroll, did you oppose these funding cuts? You're God damn right I did!
Such a spontaneous outbreak of political honesty, aside from providing a moment of catharsis for Carroll, would have cleared the air around a bad decision already costing the Allan government more than the money it will save in future years.
Alas, there are no Hollywood endings in Spring Street and too few good men.
Carroll's other choice was to stick to a cynical script approved by advisers within the premier's private office in which he neither confirms nor denies the funding delay, refuses to acknowledge the financial impact on government schools and offers a vague promise to fully fund the Gonski reforms 'through the life of the agreement' – in other words, sometime in the next 10 years.
Having centred his tie to his satisfaction and given his neatly clipped, salt and pepper locks one final look in the mirror, Carroll decided discretion was the better part of valour.
He took his seat in estimates, looked back at his questioners and declared with Delphic circularity: 'We are getting on with doing everything that we are bound to do.'
Not even Jack Nicholson could do much with that line.
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