Joseph Poprzeczny

GOVERNMENTS find it hard avoiding being secretive and clandestine.

WA has four State-owned universities and one private campus.All offer fee-paying places to overseas students, thereby boosting WA’s foreign exchange earnings.

WESTERN Australia’s three conservative parties – Liberals, Nationals and One Nation – are a shabby, rudderless lot.The Liberals are split between three warring factions – the right, center-right and the wets.

LIKE Aussie Rules, politics is a fast-moving activity and can be played deadly seriously.Usually there are only the numerically astute and the politically redundant, especially during party pre-selection season.

IN recent years we’ve been subjected to a stream of apparently insightful reports in Australia’s tabloids claiming the Navy’s six Collins-class submarines were duds.

IF Labor leader Kim Beazley wins this year’s federal election, a WA-born Prime Minister and WA-born Premier will, at the same time for the first time, govern Western Australians.

IT’S going to be a battle royale, a huge barney, one hell of a shebang.That’s how most in-the-know party activists are depicting the Liberal State Conference on July 28 and 29, two days after Prime Minister John Howard’s birthday.

PERTH political consultant Noel Crichton-Browne is in the fortunate position of his work being his hobby.Politics has been his pastime since he made his stockmarket fortune in his 20s while working in the State’s north-west.

WHILE European leaders pontificated to jetsetting US President George W Bush last week about Kyoto and other global panics, something else surfaced in California.

DOES the second Blair Labour electoral landslide hold any lessons for Western Australia, or Australia, for that matter?

LAST week, Pauline Hanson tightened her grip over WA’s One Nation division.

MANY people hold firm views on education, and Education Minister Allan Carpenter is no exception.

WA’S newly elected Legislative Councillors (MLCs) held their inaugural sitting yesterday.Among the 34-strong contingent were WA’s first ever One Nation MLCs, three of them.

MEMBERS of Geoff Gallop’s Cabinet are rather sensitive about issues like economic management and accountability. Understandably so.

TRAVEL, it broadens the mind, mate, broadens the mind.As with so many cliches there’s a grain of truth even with this one.

THE path to farsighted urban planning is like that much talked about road to Satan’s home, which is said to be paved with good intentions.

AS night inevitably follows day, the mainstream print media across Australia – indeed, across most of the democratic world – presents readers with cursory surveys on how new governments have performed over their first 100 days.

IT WAS sudden and unexpected.Before the party meeting Hendy was boss; after it, it was Max.

SEVERAL years ago I asked a now retired, but then senior, Federal Labor MP what he thought of WA’s increasingly active Greens.

DOES WA have a first class union movement? Or is it second class; or third, or fourth? Or perhaps fifth rate?It’s an important issue because the earnings, thus well-being, of some 900,000 workers plus their dependents, are at stake.

NEW WA Attorney-General Jim McGinty has headed off on his first interstate outing in his new job, having already played a key role in the resolution of one of the biggest conflicts concerning WA business.

LAST week six Royal New Zealand Air Force Sky Hawks arrived in WA to participate in a defence exercise that even included a French nuclear submarine.

WITH the wheels falling off the high tax Howard Government one can be forgiven for having hoped for some stability within the new government West Australians so recently elected.

WA’s political battle lines for 2001, at least, seem to have been drawn.

FORMER Murdoch University political scientist and now Premier, Dr Geoff Gallop, can be forgiven for concluding that reading some of Bill Shakespeare's more conflict-ridden plays would be vastly more helpful in under-standing Liberal Party machinatio...

NOW our new ministers have enjoyed a week of the trappings of office they’d be wise to ponder on why they’ll have outgoing Premier Richard Court eyeballing them in the foreseeable future.

LEISURE is adversely impacting on the circulation of Perth’s two major newspapers, The West Australian and The Sunday Times.

ELECTION nights are similar – figures, percentages, swings, hugs, kisses, cheers, and inspiring speeches.“We have been through the wilderness and we have emerged victorious tonight,” incoming Prem-ier Geoff Gallop told the Labor faithful.

DEMOCRATIC elections destroy as well as enhance political careers – and election 2001 will be no different.

THIS election campaign is a numbers tussle between a moderate left-of-centre Labor Party and a moderately reformist coalition of rural-based Nationals and urban and rural-based Liberals.

ONGOING exposes of the Wilkie Swan affair clearly show there’s been hectic activity in Mr Kim Wilkie’s 2 Mint Street, East Victoria Park electoral office.

It’s often instructive to retrace one’s footsteps and ponder on why things changed.