Now CMM understands why everybody is always about to fix vocational education and training but nobody ever gets around to. The secret authors of vocational education policy are admirers of Charles Dickens’ all-controlling bureaucracy, the Circumlocution Office, in Little Dorrit. And they have been busy, very busy doing nothing for 20 years. The estimable National Centre for Vocational Education Research demonstrates how, by setting out VET policy planning and legislation if not achievements, in state and commonwealth jurisdictions and nine policy areas from 1998 to last year. And a bewildering bunch of blather it is too.  The Circumlocution Office had one abiding function to explain to governments intent on change “how not to do it.” In Australian VET policy its achievements abide.