There was once an Australian federal government - I forget which or even when, it was so long ago - whose cabinet was so secretive about in its conduct of the nation's affairs, and so overconfident of getting away with whatever it liked in this situation, that it took to contemptuously calling its own backbenchers - and by extension the opposition, the press and the populace - "The Mushroom Club".

This was a reference to the fact that everyone in the nation but themselves were, like mushroom-growers' commercial crops, "kept in the dark and fed shit".

Happily, however, this nasty little inside joke and the overweening arrogance and lack of accountability it signified didn't go unpunished for long. A sharp-eared journalist heard about it, broke the story in the media, and the resultant storm of parliamentary and popular outrage eventually helped sweep the offending administration from office.