Tony Abbott is either a barefaced liar or he has a mind like Swiss cheese. "This is the worst-managed program in living memory, bar none," he spluttered on Wednesday, banging on again about the government's roof insulation scheme.

Hardly. That distinction belongs to the Howard government's grand plan to acquire the Super Seasprite helicopter for the navy, an epic fiasco that blundered along for 12 years and squandered well over $1 billion before it was scrapped.

Given Phoney Toney's claim, ad nauseam, that only the Coalition can save the nation from Labor's waste and extravagance, here is a useful recap:

The Howard government signed to buy 11 of these helicopters in 1997, for $746 million. The project was dodgy from day one: the Seasprites were an American design from the late 1950s but somehow they were to be crammed with 21st-century avionics and weapons systems. This was the equivalent of trying to stuff a formula one Ferrari engine into an HD Holden station wagon; it was never going to work, and it never did.

The choppers could fly only in daylight and good weather and even then they were dangerously unstable. Eventually, they were grounded permanently in 2006, although not before another $201 million had been thrown away on buying Penguin air-to-surface missiles for them.