Opinion

Since State Scene recently highlighted the state Labor Party’s dismal electoral performances – measured by the number of primary votes Labor gained in the 1989, 1993, 1996, 2001 and 2005 state elections – in the interest of balance perhaps it’s time the L

Well, it has happened again. Western Australia is to have another governor, a retired public servant, 67-year-old Dr Ken Michael, and the people were again denied a say in who would hold their state’s most powerful constitutional post.

Brance office syndrome, the inferiority complex that rears its head every few years in Western Australia, is overdue for a return if stock exchange pecking order is a guide.

I was reading an obituary this week about Jack ‘River’ Murray, a legendary Fremantle footballer from the 1940s and 1950s.

A delegate attending a recent Liberal Party rural divisional conference unexpectedly announced he was fed up with living under three tiers of government – national, state and local – and said one should be scrapped.

It has taken two years for the Bank of Scotland, trading under the alphabet soup name of HBOS, to bed down its sometimes troublesome Australian subsidiary, BankWest, but recent events in the market flag the launch of what some observers see as a classic ‘

Last week I was going to air my personal views on the Schapelle Corby case following her conviction for drug trafficking in Bali.

We are very, very uncomfortable that Foodland Associated Ltd has agreed to sell 16 of its best Action supermarkets in Western Australia to one of the two dominant grocery conglome

State Scene has three excellent informants with a good view into what’s happening within Canberra’s conservative elite headed by John Howard and John Anderson.

What do the chaps at Crosby Partners know that eludes Australian investors? Simple really. Every morning they look at a map of the world and ask a simple question: “has China disappeared?”

There has been much reference to the promised tax cuts in this year’s Federal Budget, with the Labor opposition damning its “unfairness” while supporters have emailed around the famous restaurant analogy we published on this page last year.

John Howard and his senior ministers, all of whom hold interstate seats, show all the signs of embarking upon megalomaniacal bureaucratic practices rather than remaining the levelheaded administrators that Australians rightly expect.

There is nothing new about the sight of hot money looking for a fat profit.

Just in case anyone missed me, I have had the great pleasure of visiting the State’s vast North West with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry’s annual tour.

Now that Labor’s One-Vote-One-Value legislation is finalised, let’s consider how parties and voters, the latter allegedly its beneficiaries, have emerged from this drawn-out tussle.

One step forward, one step back. If that sounds like marking time it’s because it is. And if you think it’s how the stock market is performing right now, you’re right.

The competitive landscape facing Western Australian businesses will become a lot clearer over the next few weeks after the state and federal governments release plans for tax and industrial relations reforms.

Not many people in Perth have taken an interest in the $760 million takeover battle for the alternative energy company, Pacific Hydro.

I attended an Institute of Management Consultants function this week, where the organisation welcomed several fellowships and introduced a new certificate program to try to provide some form of solid footing to the profession here.

An exercise worth doing after any election is calculating by just how much the victor has won.

Picking winners is a game played with gusto at Ascot on a Saturday afternoon, and on the stock market every day of the week.

Examining the thinking of Perth’s council candidates has provided some interesting fodder for thought, especially with regard to issues confronting our central city and its role as our capital.

Last month, State Scene outlined how the National Party handed the balance of power in the upper house to the Greens by way of a secret, ideologically contradictory cross-preference deal, rather than ensuring it went to the conservatives, with whom most r

With the upper house still debating Jim McGinty’s One Vote One Value Bill, which some Liberal MPs and all Nationals view unfavourably, it’s worth considering several less publicised aspects of the ongoing issue of vote weighting in rural seats.

Woolworths is trading on a prospective price/earnings ratio of 16.85. BHP Billiton is on 9.85. Can anyone explain the gap between two of Australia’s corporate icons because it is ridiculously wide?

I noted a recent Federal Government initiative to allow backpackers an additional year on their working holiday visas – something that I believe is long overdue and still probably doesn’t go far enough.

I have read with interest the many articles relating to the shortage of accountants and the various solutions being advocated to relieve the situation, the latest of which was tit

The Gallop Government’s historic One Vote One Value Bill will be debated in the upper house next week, with voting on it to take place a fortnight or so later.

In your editorial on interest rates, ‘As political theatre this doesn’t rate’ (WA Business News, April 14) you say: “From what I recall, Mr Howard never made a promise that i

Petrol at $1.10 a litre, and more, is a pain in the pocket, as we all know. Less well known is the changes it brings to the way we think, and act.

There is a fascinating battle under way over states’ rights and taxation, with federal Treasurer Peter Costello wielding his new-found power as chieftain of the biggest pot of gold the nation has ever seen – the GST.