Environment minister Peter Sirett’s admission that he would be very surprised if the States accepted his board’s proposals for a £26 ‘car tax’ instead of hourly paid parking should sound the death-knell for what has become the bench-mark in daft government propositions.

Unfortunately for islanders, that is unlikely to be the case.

Instead, what are clearly dead-duck proposals will instead trigger a spate of amendments from other deputies so there will be even less control on what eventually emerges than had the department done what it was told in the first place.

While this incident is not without humour – the thought of a group of politicians and their officials labouring over something they knew to be finished before even releasing it is surely black comedy – there is a far more serious side.

Environment was given a clear set of instructions by the States Assembly and, because members did not like what they were being asked to do, they ignored the wishes of the House.

That is a serious state of affairs.

If members truly felt that what they were being asked was unacceptable, they should either have resigned or else returned to the House to argue for the original instruction to be rescinded or modified.

Instead, they have wasted time and public funds pretending to follow the wishes of the Assembly and before the expensive ink on the Billet d’Etat was even dry, their ‘work’ was exposed as a sham, possibly even a deceit.

The other unsatisfactory element is the role of the Policy Council. It is mandated to advise the States on formulating and implementing policies to meet objectives agreed by the Assembly and on coordinating such work.

Yet it has failed to rein in Environment’s own particular brand of eccentricity — which clearly was not just down to its previous minister — or even highlight that a department was refusing to do what the States had asked it to.

Less than 12 months into a new government, one that ought to have learned from the mistakes of its predecessor, any sense of focus is starting to unravel.

With the economic and external problems that are looming, that is gravely worrying.