Defining what failure actually means in this case is not easy because so many layers of government have not worked in the way they were designed.

Let’s start with the government of Queensland which has, on one hand, encouraged India’s Adani group to push ahead with what could become a $16.5 billion mine, rail and port system employing thousands of people.

On the other hand, the Government of Queensland is guilty of erecting hurdles which make approvals for the project harder to achieve.

The end result is uncertainty as one arm of the government offers encouragement for the Carmichael project while another arm appears to discourages development.

If it wasn’t so ridiculous it would actually be funny, though it’s a fair bet that no one in the Adani group is laughing today because they had expected something better from the Queensland government, something called leadership.

The story of encouragement followed by discouragement is repeated at Australian Government level where officials say one thing while other officials do something else.

Local government is almost certainly complicit in this creation of a system which has the hallmarks of a perpetual motion machine with each step forward followed by a step backward.

Tempting as it might be for The Hog to toss in a few words about the Australian legal system that might be going too far because all the courts are doing is interpreting (or trying to interpret) the laws written by politicians.

In the latest hold-up it is the processes of an Australian government court which has intervened on behalf of the yakka skink, a type of lizard, and the ornamental snake.

A Federal Court found that the Environment Minister Greg Hunt had not “taken into account advice given over the skink and the snake”, two species declared vulnerable and in need of a specific management policy.

But, and this is where the matter really becomes a failure of government, it seems that the Minister did not take into account the welfare of the skink and the snake because his department did not provide the advice.

Why the department did not provide all of the advice required under laws which have, presumably, been written by people working for the department, is the $16.5 billion question which someone should be required to answer – or be sacked.

Unfortunately, this is where another level of government failure can be observed, and that’s the difference between how the public and private sectors react to mistakes.

In the private sector a small mistake earns a black mark for an employee, and a big mistake earns dismissal on the grounds of incompetence.

In the government a small mistake earns a cuddle and a big mistake earns a transfer to another department where, presumably, the incompetence can continue.

Who’s to blame in this farce? Politicians, obviously. They’re the people who wrote the laws which are proving impossible to interpret, while also providing a road map for anyone opposed to a particular development to find a way to achieve their objective.

The skink and the snake are simply the latest example of how project approval laws can actually be used for project disapproval and while the two creatures are the headline makers today there is no doubt that something else will be found to delay the Carmichael project.

Two final thoughts from The Hog are worth airing.

The first is that this latest delay for the Adani development might not actually be such a big disappointment for the Indian-owned group which was facing the high hurdles of finding the money to development mine and then achieve a profitable sales price for the coal.

A delay might suit the developers as they wait for the coal market to settle at a sustainable level which would permit the entry of material from the Carmichael mine.

The second thought is that someone really ought to find a way to bottle Australian project approval processes because they are as close to perpetual motion as anything seen before.

One step forward. One step back. One step forward. One step back … and on and on we go, bobbing up and down in the same spot and achieving absolutely nothing.

To call this failure of government a disgrace is an understatement.

It is something far worse. It is a failure of government to govern, leaving that job to protest groups, lobbyists and people who have no interest in the development of Australian economy.