Joseph Poprzeczny

Regular viewers of the ABC’s Sunday morning program, Insiders, will have noted that two occasional guest commentators – Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Melbourne’s Herald-Sun columnists, Piers Akerman and Andrew Bolt, respectively – long ago conceded Labor w

The opening of a $4 million privately funded, dual carriageway steel and concrete bridge over Millars Creek near Bunbury has given the all-clear for release of an additional 700 residential lots in greater Bunbury.

Since about April, when Liberal strategists began realising they were unlikely to shake-off Kevin Rudd as easily as initially anticipated, they’ve resorted to using a new phrase.

One of State Scene’s sharpest political contacts insists that spades always be called spades, never digging utensils. He won’t blindly fall into line by referring to things the way political spin doctors – of whom we have plenty – want them described and

Since about April, all of State Scene’s best informants have said that the coming federal election would be held in November; in other words, later rather than sooner.

When Newspoll - Australia’s most reliable measure of two-party voter mood - shows Labor running at 56 percent and Liberals at just 44, the only question left to ask is how big will the seat margin be after the dust from the coming landslide has settled.

The road transport lobbies are very close to the government, as can be observed at any social function where they lob.

With the survival of the Howard-Costello government looking shaky, Australians face the prospect of whizz-bang Kevin Rudd as prime minister.

It’s now most likely the John Howard-led Coalition will go into the election campaign well behind Kevin Rudd-led Labor.

What is it about so many former Australian prime ministers that prompts them to look publicly foolish?

The worst feature of Australia’s media is use of the gotcha ploy, resorted to so often on Canberra’s slow-news days.

A long weekend on New Zealand’s beautiful south island is something I’d always recommend.

The latest issue of the Sydney right-of-centre journal, Quadrant, which Prime Minister John Howard regards highly, carries an editorial that considers various aspects of the ongoing debate surrounding the climate change puzzle.

For months there’ve been whispers that a well-heeled group inside Western Australia’s Liberal Party has been head hunting Chamber of Commerce and Industry WA and former state treasury chief, John Langoulant.

State Scene remains bamboozled by the failure of successive state governments to tap the Wellington Dam’s huge stock of water.

It’s becoming increasingly evident that the federal opposition is headed by two individuals with quite different left-of-centre visions for Australia.

Since the Gallop government completely ignored State Scene’s warning in May 2002 to fully monitor lobbying, it’s now an appropriate time to assess the Carpenter government’s just-instituted lobbyists’ register.

Ongoing Howard government moves against Australia’s traditional federalist arrangements, through the constant expansion of Canberra’s powers, have been regularly highlighted by State Scene.

The days of senators being champions for the states that send them to Canberra have long passed.

State Scene had a variety of casual and part-time jobs before graduating from a Perth ivory tower to enter the ‘school of hard knocks’ as a full-time worker.

Because State Scene has long supported cleaner energy generation worldwide, the Australian Labor Party’s decision at its national conference to at last scrap its silly three uranium mines policy and instead back additional mining of this energy source, wa

Growing numbers of confounded political and party boffins have, understandably, begun asking each other who is going to win the coming federal election?

State Scene was stunned to read former premier Geoff Gallop slamming Western Australia’s business community from his ivory tower in Sydney for what he called its failure to criticise lobbyists Brian Burke, Julian Grill and Noel Crichton-Browne.

The next time you face a screaming leftie on your TV screen, or worse still, in your face, claiming America and President George W Bush are hated across the entire Middle East, keep the following in mind.

Last month’s announcement by former Fremantle Labor MHR, Carmen Lawrence, that she intends to return to academe raises an interesting triple-headed historical question.

Predicting the demise of institutions – including political ones that have been with us for ages – is a risky exercise.

An interesting aspect of what has been dubbed ‘triple-C-gate’, ‘Burkegate’, or ‘lobbygate’ by different media outlets is the expulsion of Labor high-flyers from cabinet and party ranks.

It’s common for those living in parliamentary democracies to forget most of their accomplished figures.

Despair, despondency, dejection. Pick any of these ‘d’ words and it will describe the mood within the parliamentary wing of the state Liberal Party. The reason is obvious.

The past three dramatic weeks of Corruption and Crime Commission hearings into the shadowy dealings of Brian Burke, Julian Grill and Noel Crichton-Browne exposed several shortcomings within Western Australia’s outdated system of governance.

Few would disagree that February 2007 was the month the dual questions of perceived water shortages and suspected climate change were firmly embedded onto Australia’s political stage.

With the political stage now set for a federal election in October or November, and any upheaval in the upper echelons of Western Australia’s two major parties before the February 2009 state contest unlikely, a cursory look at various contenders is worthw