The good, bad and ugly on the state of our state

That pile of reports was only this thick.... The Victorian State Government has been criticised for tabling 250 reports in State Parliament. Photo: Jessica Shapiro

It's the day the State Government comes clean on all sorts of things it would rather you didn't know - and they do it all at once, hoping you might not be able to take it all in.

Yesterday was the annual dump day in State Parliament. About 250 reports were tabled. Stacked up, they reach about as high as cabinet minister and former Carlton ruckman Justin Madden.

It's a tale of the good, the bad and the ugly, with revelations of police corruption, trains running red lights, hospital errors leaving patients disfigured, and public officials awarding themselves huge pay bonuses in breach of Government rules.

There are success stories beneath some of the glossy covers, as state-funded bodies as varied as the zoo, Fed Square Pty Ltd, the parole board, the Cheltenham and Regional Cemeteries Trust and the Young Farmers Finance Council detail their annual accounts and activities.

But there is also lots of bad and ugly stuff among the smiling photos, which is why the Opposition condemns the annual farce as a de facto cover-up.

''This isn't accountability, it's chaos,'' Liberal leader Ted Baillieu said yesterday, conveniently overlooking the fact that things were no better under Jeff Kennett's Liberal government.

Some of what we learnt yesterday was serious.

The Office of Police Integrity, for example, reported that senior officers have leaked sensitive information to organised crime figures, and the police data watchdog accused force command of repeatedly failing to overhaul its information storage systems.

Some of it was close to scandalous. The Ombudsman reported that the Environment Protection Authority had allowed financial considerations to take priority over environmental standards when it allowed Casey Council to build houses on a landfill site that subsequently leaked potentially deadly gas into homes.

We learnt of some hits to the hip pocket.

This year's Melbourne grand prix, for example, was the most expensive (for taxpayers) of all, with a public subsidy of more than $40 million.

Some of what we learnt might make you wince.

The Health Services Commissioner detailed the case of a man who had the wrong finger operated on after he had told a nurse the wrong one was mentioned in paperwork. The nurse corrected the paperwork, but the surgeon still picked the wrong finger.

And some of yesterday's avalanche of information was kind of funny.

Consumer Affairs Victoria reported, for example, that when it inspected Queen Victoria Market in April, it discovered some of the stallholders were ripping us off by rorting the scales used to weigh the fruit and veg.

It all adds up to a report card on the state of the state, and if the Government is sincere about being open and accountable, it will find a better way of making it public.

Paul Austin is The Age's state political editor.