Joseph Poprzeczny

CALENDAR year 2003 is set to be a memorable and self-strengthening one for WA. And that’s despite the drought acro

An outcome of Labor’s Burke-Dowding WA Inc years was a promptly forgotten report by one-time under-treasurer Les McCarrey – The Report of the Independent Commission to Review Public Sector Finances.

OCTOBER 2002 is likely to be remembered in WA Labor circles as the month Premier Geoff Gallop started following in the footsteps of his Oxford University pal, high-profile British Prime Minister, Tony Blair.

THERE’S a ticklish problem currently before the upper house.Several months ago the Government announced the appointment of a new electoral commissioner.

SCHOOLS where cricket and footie are played generally have a first and a second 11 and 18.WA’s present parliamentary arrangements have something similar – a first 14 and a second half dozen.The former is the 14-strong Gallop -led cabinet.

AT last it’s published – four years after his sudden death in August 1998.

MY dictionary defines the word, ‘estimate’ as: “Approximate judgment of number or amount”, and ‘guesstimate’ as: “Estimate based on guesswork”.

WEST Aussies love winners.Look at the response when WA’s North-West Shelf last month beat Gulf States and Indonesian based LNG suppliers to meet China’s needs with a $25 billion long-term contract.Understandably that story splashed across newspape...

IS there such a thing as a typical WA politician?Though not an easy question to answer quickly, first and foremost, they typically belong to political parties.

DID you know WA has a chateau d’eau?Do you know what a chateau d’eau is?It’s French, for water castle.Geographers use the term to describe high terrain, particularly regions from where rivers originate.

MORE One Nation than Australian Democrat votes elected disgruntled WA Democrat Senator Andrew Murray at the last election.

IF Labor is removed in February 2005 it may be because Premier Gallop is leading what is emerging to be the most unimaginative government WA has had since the 1930s.It has yet to surface with an original idea.

SOMETHING extraordinary occurred just after the State election in February 2001.

FOR much of past century planners and civic-minded people urged the linking of Perth’s hemmed-in CBD to Northbridge by sinking the Perth-Fremantle railway line.

CAPITAL punishment is an old chestnut if ever there was one.Thankfully it was scrapped by Burke-led Labor with the Acts Amendment (Abolition of Capital Punishment) Act 1984.

WA-TRAINED economist and Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) chief, Professor Allan Fels, has presented his agency’s Trade Practices Act (1974) submission.

QUIZ MPs on why they opted for politics and you’re likely to get a longwinded explanation stressing idealistic reasons.But few believe them.

WESTERN Australia’s most famous pastoralist is ‘Kings in Grass Castles’ Paddy Durack, who drove his herd from near where Canberra stands to the Kimberley.

THE concept of ‘gridlock’ was made popular during Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign.We’ll never know which Clinton spin-doctor coined it, but it had a ring of truth, and so helped dislodge George Bush Snr from the White House.

IT’S not often these days that Federal Parliamentary debates are fought using historical argument.

THE 20th century was more intensely ideological than all preceeding centuries, except perhaps those of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation era that gave rise to Christendom’s many dissenting faiths.

LAST year eco-activists were gearing up for a crusade against a Derby tidal power station.

Switzerland, which, in the 1890s, many of Australia’s founding fathers admired.Oh, how things have changed.Moreover, before the Great War, Swiss governance practices influenced many leading Labor identities.

Hopefuls are getting into starting blocks for election 2005.Others are still assessing likely numbers before deciding whether to attempt launching or re-launching parliamentary careers.

INCREASING numbers of State MPs are retiring from Parliament and launching careers as well-paid lobbyists, in the process drawing incomes over and above their handsome six-figure parliamentary pensions.

TO understand some of parliament’s less salubrious clandestine deals and antics it’s essential to appreciate that most of its 91 members aren’t there to be legislators, as elected.

LAST time Treasurer Eric Ripper became involved with a plan that carried a number of Ps in its initials, PPT – premium property tax – it sparked a bitter campaign by the well-off, forcing him and Premier Geoff Gallop into hasty retreat.

They fear they may be facing an extended period in Opposition due to the Upper House’s one-vote-one-value imbroglio, now before five Supreme Court judges.

FORMER Perth journalist Cortlan Bennett has won a major international award at a lavish ceremony in the Beverley Hills Hotel in California.

LAST month’s three-day Supreme Court hearing – Marquet v The Attorney General of WA & Another – now being considered by five judges, may well be seen by politicians as historic.

DISCUSSING politics without raising the issue of money is like assessing a wedding but forgetting the ring.The two simply go hand in hand.

LIBERAL leader Colin Barnett desperately wants to become Premier, just as Geoff Gallop did in the years leading up to his election win.But, unlike Dr Gallop, he’s unlikely to get two bites of the cherry.