Opinion

Confidence is the fuel of stock market booms. Run dry and the consequences are dire, as we have seen when earlier booms stalled.

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.

If there’s two kinds of businesses I have never really grasped, it’s the fields of motivational speaking and network marketing.

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

I’m not a real fan of budget week.

Secession bobs up as a topic every time Western Australia goes into boom mode, and now is no different – though there is an emerging (and amusing) variation on the secession theme

The industrial relations genie is now out – Australian Workplace Agreements aren’t bad for everybody.

If business in Western Australia thought it was impossible for government services to get worse than they already are, then just wait until the lethargy triggered by the Corruptio

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

Bubbles never last long, as every child knows. No sooner have you blown one than it pops.

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.

For those with an eye for politics, the past week’s discussion on Australian Workplace Agreements puts Western Australia at the forefront of the debate.

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.

We have a few great columnists whose fine work is to be found in the back half of this paper.

Unemployment at 2.7 per cent of the workforce is reason to celebrate; for most of us.

Like many other Western Australians, I enjoy wines from the state. Admittedly, my loyalty to WA-only products has waned over the years as I have learned to appreciate that our winemakers have some worthy competition elsewhere around the globe.

Reinventing yourself, repeatedly, is not an easy trick.

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.

It has been a long time since anyone thought seriously about investing in WA’s Wheatbelt region for the potential of a substantial future capital gain.

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

Wealth is strange subject which we have shied away from for many years.

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.

Two weeks ago I had to make a presentation to a sizeable group of businesspeople.

No boom lasts forever, but over the past week Briefcase has seen evidence that this boom really is something completely different and might, just might, live up to the expectation

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

I very much appreciate state opposition leader Paul Omodei focusing attention back on the Perth foreshore.

It’s not Brian Burke’s Panama hat that is causing so much trouble in Western Australia these days. It’s something far simpler – it’s the letter ‘b’ itself.

This week, as a treat for its reader, Briefcase wanted to declare this page a Burke-free zone.

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.

Astute readers will have noted my absence during the past few weeks.

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.

Western Australia’s Corruption and Crime Commission inquiry has become a much bigger issue than any observer would have predicted at the outset – or even at the start of last week.