Joseph Poprzeczny

LAST week, State Scene outlined how Australia would have become a true democracy if the 1891 draft constitution of South Australia's democratic-minded premier, Charles Kingston, was adopted.

SOME time during our schooling we learned how the six British colonies on the island continent Matthew Flinders named Australia formed a federated Commonwealth.

AN easily overlooked aspect of most political manoeuvres is that of unintended consequences.

PERTH company AgritechSmart-Water has commissioned an economic review of its plans to use Wellington Dam as a major new source of water for the South West.

WHAT are the chances of Jim McGinty being regularly cheered and toasted at all major Nationals WA get-togethers? The reason for asking is that this long-time urban-based paramount leftist factional chief, when fine-tuning his electoral redistribution legi

ONE thing seems guaranteed - the Democratic Party in the US can be relied on to field idiosyncratic candidates for the presidency.

IF we're to be subjected to that "D" word, then let's at least focus on the correct one, which means ignoring the depression sparked by Wall Street's 1929 crash.

SO far there have been two unwelcomed signals from the Barnett-Grylls alliance.

IT'S probably because State Scene, long ago, spent several months in the advertising industry that the ploys and proclivities of those in that sector continue to intrigue.

IN response to State Scene's column of October 2, 'Bailing out for a soft landing', a reader has suggested something should be done to stop the ongoing practice of politicians vacating their seats after general elections.

SO far, so good...in fact, better than expected. The Barnett-Nationals partnership government seems to have comfortably ensconced itself into power, which means those big white chauffeur-driven ministerial automobiles now have new passengers.

IT'S not surprising a clever wordsmith some decades ago suggested using skydiving terminology to colourfully describe an increasingly widespread political practice.

IT'S difficult when assessing elections not to immediately reach for statistics - size of swings, percentage of preferences gained by parties, levels of various majorities, and other such measures that help assess how well or how badly parties and candida

IT'S difficult to believe that, just 31 months ago, Alan Carpenter was seen as Labor's brightest rising star.

THE standout feature of Saturday's panic-driven premature election was that neither Alan Carpenter nor Colin Barnett pulled their party over the line to govern Western Australia in their own right.

Saturday's state election is unlikely to shine in the annals of Western Australian political history as a memorable event.

As so often happens in the unpredictable hurly-burly of party political rivalry, while you're looking one way there's something happening elsewhere that's at least equally, and often far more, important.

Long-time State Scene readers may recall advice offered in this column to the Gallop government back in May 2002 on the best way to administer the then-emerging but now blossoming lobbying industry.

With three Liberal leaders - Matt Birney, Paul Omodei, and Troy Buswell - humiliatingly dumped since Colin Barnett's resignation after his failed bid to oust Labor's Geoff Gallop in 2005 - the Liberals have Mr Barnett again leading them.

It's heartening to find that members of the Liberal Party can still find something to laugh about.

The first in-depth assessment of Kevin Rudd's Australia 2020 Summit has been published.

Of Western Australia's 32 premiers, only two - Sir John Forrest and Sir Charles Court - are likely to ever get within cooee of challenging Brian Burke in the most-written-about stakes.

After each federal election, State Scene scans the new ministerial line-up to see if any political maddies were appointed to head the foreign affairs and defence ministries.

Because Western Australia's resources boom springs largely from China's economic expansion there's a danger that, in Australia at least, China will be judged solely on its economic performance.

Labor's most recent factional fracas over who will contest the safe seat of Morley - former ministerial rising star John D'Orazio or TV reporter Reece Whitby - had several interesting twists before Mr D'Orazio rejoined the ALP and then resigned to contest

With Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in danger of being dubbed 'Media Stunt Kev' due to his obsessive releasing of pie-in-the-sky plans, it's encouraging that one of his ministers has his feet firmly on the ground and a clear vision of how things should be acro

Just as political correctness, media spin, and obsessive management of the compressed daily news cycle become the norm, a bit of old-style Western Australia has burst back onto the state's dilapidated political stage.

Thirty years ago, one of the governments headed by then premier Sir Charles Court adopted a state slogan - The State of Excitement - believing it represented what was then the mood in Western Australia.

The Carpenter government's bungled handling of the lobbying sector and the opposition's failure to suggest constructive reforms suggests Western Australia's major parties are unlikely to ever offer

Ongoing disputation over government-provided education, including the so-called Outcomes Based Education (OBE) imbroglio, hasn't electorally harmed Premier Alan Carpenter who was, for several years, Labor's education spokesman and then education minister.

Political autobiographies, memoirs and authorised biographies are invariably highly selective products and can therefore be quite misleading, by deliberate omission if nothing else.

Talk about trying to overfill an already overflowing ten-gallon bucket.