Opinion

With three Liberal leaders - Matt Birney, Paul Omodei, and Troy Buswell - humiliatingly dumped since Colin Barnett's resignation after his failed bid to oust Labor's Geoff Gallop in 2005 - the Liberals have Mr Barnett again leading them.

In halls of power around the world, some very worried politicians and public servants are beginning to realise that peak oil production is real and it is happening right now.

The attributes of a good leader include the ability to plan for the long term and put in place a succession plan.

It's heartening to find that members of the Liberal Party can still find something to laugh about.

I've spent an interesting few days examining the views of a number of business people to understand just where our economy is heading.

A booming economy creating staff shortages while young people leave the state for more interesting places.

Briefcase has previously predicted that economic conditions will deteriorate, both globally and locally.

After each federal election, State Scene scans the new ministerial line-up to see if any political maddies were appointed to head the foreign affairs and defence ministries.

Newspaper headlines have turned increasingly negative this month on Australia's economic outlook.

I've been intrigued to find how the twists and turns in the debate over climate change creates new political allies and odd ideological pairings.

Labor's most recent factional fracas over who will contest the safe seat of Morley - former ministerial rising star John D'Orazio or TV reporter Reece Whitby - had several interesting twists before Mr D'Orazio rejoined the ALP and then resigned to contest

I was reminded the other day of a phenomenon I'd previously heard of in general terms, though I could not recall a name being put to it.

Premier Alan Carpenter and Liberal leader Troy Buswell both made bold announcements on major infrastructure projects last weekend.

With Prime Minister Kevin Rudd in danger of being dubbed 'Media Stunt Kev' due to his obsessive releasing of pie-in-the-sky plans, it's encouraging that one of his ministers has his feet firmly on the ground and a clear vision of how things should be acro

At some time or other - probably at a dinner party - most of us have been asked the question about which 10 people you'd want to have with you if you were stranded on a desert island.

Just as political correctness, media spin, and obsessive management of the compressed daily news cycle become the norm, a bit of old-style Western Australia has burst back onto the state's dilapidated political stage.

Thirty years ago, one of the governments headed by then premier Sir Charles Court adopted a state slogan - The State of Excitement - believing it represented what was then the mood in Western Australia.

The Carpenter government's bungled handling of the lobbying sector and the opposition's failure to suggest constructive reforms suggests Western Australia's major parties are unlikely to ever offer

Ongoing disputation over government-provided education, including the so-called Outcomes Based Education (OBE) imbroglio, hasn't electorally harmed Premier Alan Carpenter who was, for several years, Labor's education spokesman and then education minister.

Premier Alan Carpenter has left many people confused and frustrated by his blanket rejection of the ambitious island development proposal announced last week for North Fremantle.

The oil market includes all types of crude oil, condensate, natural gas liquids, oil recovered from shale and oil sands, and now, increasingly, biofuels.

State Scene highlights Australia's first Iraqi affair because it implicates Mr Whitlam just like the Iraqi-AWB Affair implicates Mr Howard; two PMs who have a conga-line of fans and gloating admire

Political autobiographies, memoirs and authorised biographies are invariably highly selective products and can therefore be quite misleading, by deliberate omission if nothing else.

I had to get coffees for group of people at work last week, and I couldn't help seeing of it as a great example of how the world has changed.

WA Business News invited some of Western Australia's top architects and planners to discuss Perth's development in a boardroom forum last month.

Tenacity and perseverance are words that we often associate with battlers – those we admire, who get through life despite the odds.

Four years ago, WA Business News started writing about the shortages of skilled labour that had emerged in economic hot spots such as engineering and mineral exploration.

Talk about trying to overfill an already overflowing ten-gallon bucket.

I WAS in Houston last week at the annual Offshore Technology Conference, touted as the world’s largest gathering of oil and gas professionals.

LAST week’s state budget was exactly what you’d expect from a pre-election government in a very strong electoral position, picking a few winners and hoping to make positive headlines.

BRIEFCASE, having recently returned from a visit to the land of the free, has identified the source of a possible new financial scandal in the US, which holds the potential to rock the market in th

Some key power brokers in both major political parties have apparently been heard using the term ‘new chums’.