The work on the Unintended Consequences of NAPLAN has caused us to reflect on unintended consequences generally. There is much literature on the subject because public policy inevitably has consequences that have not been anticipated by politicians or bureaucrats however well-meaning they are. Back in the 1930s Robert Merton (equally famous for enunciating the notion of the ‘self-fulfilling prophecy’) described a framework that we found useful in reflecting on unintended consequences.