Joseph Poprzeczny

The latest silly fracas between the nation’s two top Liberals – Prime Minister John Howard and his deputy Peter Costello – over who’ll be king of the castle highlights several troubling features within Liberal ranks.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult not to expect the WA Liberal Party to continue declining as a political force.

Even though it’s still several months before Liberals in Western Australia preselect their 2007 federal election senate team, moves have well and truly begun to determine which names will be in the top three spots on the party’s ticket.

Although recently departed former premier, Geoff Gallop, will soon be out of sight, for many he’s not yet entirely out of mind.

Ask any active Western Australian Liberal who their party’s ultimate movers and shakers are and you’ll be told it’s the triumvirate of senators Ian Campbell and Chris Ellison and their man in Perth, Matthias Cormann, who was a former staffer of Court gove

How can WA’s Liberals argue they oppose compulsory funding of tertiary student political activities but back compulsory funding of political parties?

Virtually since day one of the present century, Australians have been subjected to a steadily increasing stream of media reports on whether and when Prime Minister John Howard, who is not yet 67, will retire.

Now that the $5 million Kimberley water report is collecting dust in Parliament House, and disputation over transferring northern water southwards has again subsided, it’s worth reconsidering why tapping it has – in the medium to longer term – been discou

In February 2005, Western Australians voted 61.4 per cent against seven-days-a-week trading by all retailers.

Because Sydneysider John Howard has won four elections – and his side seems set to win another – there’s a tendency to attribute to him much that he simply doesn’t, and never will, deserve.

Political activity, more than other human endeavour, so often confirms the old adage about truth being stranger than fiction.

A Sydney company headed by former Labor prime minister Bob Hawke has stepped into the ongoing controversy over the most economical way of supplying Perth with fresh water.

Just before Anzac Day, several senior federal Liberal MPs had fun slinging off at Labor leader, Kim Beazley, because he’d forgotten, during a radio interview, the names of a few South Australian senators.

State Scene has encountered all sorts of forgotten items in the process of sorting dozens of files compiled over nearly 20 years.

March 2006 was important for several reasons, including the arrest of several alleged jihadists in Melbourne, showing that what US President George W Bush calls ‘the long war against terror’, continues.

A telling paragraph, carried in a western suburban newspaper story, was drawn to State Scene’s attention last week.

Now that Perth’s tabloids’ reports of the Birney-Omodei clash have wrapped up the kitchen scraps, it’s worth pondering what it’s all likely to mean to Western Australian voters.

As this month’s 31 warm-to-hot days slowly rolled by, one recurring thought was that March 2006 was likely to go down in the state’s political annals as the worst that WA’s two then opposition leaders, Kim Beazley and Matt Birney, were likely to share.

New WA Liberal leader Paul Omodei plans to take his time in unveiling his new shadow Cabinet, which will be boosted with the addition of two new members to match the 17-member Carpenter front bench.

Federal treasurer Peter Costello has convened a two-man inquiry into Australia’s tax burden and how it lines-up against so-called “comparable countries”.

Let’s be frank about the performance of the second Gallop Government in its first year, 2005; it was lacklustre.

Last month, former Labor premier Carmen Lawrence was asked during a television interview about her predecessor, Brian Burke, his role within the Labor Party and his relationship with government.

By dint of perseverance and survival at the upper echelons of the NSW and Federal Liberal parties John Howard has come to intrigue a growing cohort of journalists, especially those based in Sydney, his hometown, and Canberra, where he’s at work some weeks

Last week’s State Scene touched on the fact that the National Party has decided to go it alone electorally, to refuse to enter into coalition with the Liberals, under any circumstances.

Almost certainly three years from last, this, or next Saturday, will be next election day, since February Saturdays have become the traditional poll days in Western Australia.

Despite some people contending otherwise there was, from the moment Geoff Gallop resigned, never any doubt that Alan Carpenter would become premier.

There’s little doubt all state MPs learned the obvious lesson from Liberal leader Matt Birney’s unpleasant pre-Christmas encounter with the Privileges Committee – don’t secretly slip amendments into your Parliamentary Financial Interests Register, or else

Last week, State Scene canvassed some of the underlying reasons for the collapse in Liberal leader Matt Birney’s standing among party colleagues during the closing months of 2005, which may well result in the emergence of pressure for his replacement duri

The ranks of those Liberal MPs who are wondering if their leader, Matt Birney, will still be in his position on April 17, his wedding day, swelled markedly just before Christmas, when the Parliamentary Privileges Committee adjudicated on his secret insert

State Scene wishes to conclude this year’s assessment of the local political scene with some observations about the featherbedding and political funding of political parties.

Last week’s in-camera parliamentary privileges committee hearings on Liberal leader Matt Birney’s financial interests statements raised a host of questions that will hopefully be addressed before Christmas.

State Scene expects to be voting, soon after New Year, in a by-election for the seat of Yokine, currently held by one-time Labor minister Bob Kucera.