Recall the cult-like management systems that played tag team to take billions from Australian industry - Value-added Management, Quality Circles, Just In Time, Zero Defects, Benchmarking, Total Quality Management, Quality Assurance and Best Practice. Powering the wave from time to time were the extraordinary National Safety Council and other armies of people in dustcoats carrying clipboards. Then there were the motivators and the wellness exhorters, and most recently we had to endure the insufferable counsellors.

Common to each of these industries is that they are about nothing but talk and mystery. The talk is the talk of those with the knowledge, and that's the mystery and the envy of those on the outside. When it fizzles those who marvelled spend a few months marvelling at their own stupidity before jumping back on the wave.

In my column in The Herald today I write about the discrediting of the counselling industry. Counsellors have been told to stay away from Victoria's bushfire areas and the victims, and it appears that 11 studies have found counselling, whatever it is, made no difference to traumatised people or actually exacerbated their trauma. These are the very same counsellors the media liked to report were on their way to this or that accident, as if that was crucial and urgent element of the rescue. That counselling was offered at the scene of any unfortunate event was a common line in media reports.

Who were these counsellors? What did they do? What qualifications did they have? No one asked, so far as I know. No one except me. When I asked one counsellor whose advertised specialities included children where he gained his psychology diploma (note, not a degree), he replied: "Good one! I forget."

So what mantle of mystery now for these cooers, as I like to call them, as they slip off the bandwagon? Many will seek a seat on the climate control wagon, and some will look for a special niche. Preaching personal empowerment as the key to surviving bushfire? Climate clairvoyance?

Any suggestions?