Mark Pownall

Clive Brown’s former press secretary Daniel Smith has thrown his hat into the ring as candidate for the upcoming City of Perth council elections.

At the time it didn’t seem so extraordinary, but the more I dwelt on a couple of events I attended last week, the more it started to sink in.

We never like to go patting ourselves on the back but there are times when its worth giving ourselves credit – mainly because no-one else will.

Former ERG Ltd chief Peter Fogarty has extended his reach into the wine industry, establishing a footprint in Margaret River with the takeover of low-key producer Deep Woods Estate.

There are two things I think we can be sure of from this election campaign – we won’t be getting a canal and we won’t see any significant deregulation of shopping hours for the next decade.

Alan Newman’s interest in Western Australia’s agribusiness sector continues to grow, with the former Futuris Corporation Ltd chief involved in a fund raising deal for South Perth-based Australian Wine Holdings Ltd.

Right, it’s the pointy end of this election campaign – the time when most minds are made up.

Our 40under40 Awards have been announced and yet another group of worthy people have been recognised for their achievements – not only in business but across many other fields where entrepreneurialism and innovation thrives.

Having bemoaned the lack of vision in our politicians, I can hardly complain about Colin Barnett springing the Kimberley canal project on us.

Xanadu Normans Wines has sold a Margaret River vineyard, raising almost $3 million as it seeks to consolidate its debt and return to profitability.

Just a few weeks before going into hospital and, as it turns out, sealing his fate as Federal Opposition leader, Mark Latham was in Perth seeking answers to one of Labor’s great challenges – how to win over the small business vote.

I struggle to come to terms with the way political parties deal with the election process and I am not looking forward to the next few weeks.

BY any measure 2004 was a big year for Western Australian equities, but perhaps nothing has put it in perspective like Deloitte’s single-minded focus on local stocks through its WA Index.

JUST as the Federal Labor party rues its attempt to innovate with its leadership during the past year, we mustn’t lose sight of the need to experiment from time to time. Innovation is the key to survival and there must always be room to try new ways of t

AN awful lot has happened between editions of our newspaper but one thing has taken the headlines for almost that entire period – Asia’s tsunami.

AMID the high-profile collapse of Consolidated Constructions, and now Bunbury-based De-vaugh, a related construction industry failure has gone largely unnoticed.

THE University of Western Australia has appointed Tracey Horton as the dean of its business school, giving the Perth management consultant the job of implementing a significant new strategic direction she helped create.

PERTH entrepreneur Bill Clough is preparing for the public float of his Brazilian gold mining venture Serabi Mining on the Alternative Investment Market of the London Stock Exchange.

WA Business News doesn’t consider itself a small business newspaper by any means, but a couple of things have happened this week to make me think it should be.

Retail giants share secrets IT’S always hard to get retailers to share their secrets, so sometimes you have to wait until they retire or sell up before they’ll let a few tips slip.

I AM thinking of starting a special Monday watch column to analyse the news we have suffered with at the start of the week.

The AGM season is upon us and that perennial issue of their value is again being debated. The issue has been discussed nationally, but it is as local as ever – just check out the response (page 12) of Australian Shareholders’ Association WA branch pres

I had a consumer experience the other day that I have been stewing on, wondering how I could share my pain when I have a pretty solid rule that journalists should take a cautious approach to airing personal issues.

A Bremer Bay abalone farming venture is seeking $3.5 million from Western Australian investors to fund its expansion to commercially sustainable levels.

This week Geoff Gallop has effectively made the political trifecta, calling for a referendum on retail trading hours to remove the last of the three big issues threatening his government’s re-election.

When I first embarked on this project my expectations were totally different from what I eventually discovered.

The City of Perth might oversee the heart of corporate Western Australia, but business is under-represented on its governing council. Mark Pownall reports that many believe the State Government should recognise the unique needs of our CBD.

The bulk of Perth’s 30,000 potential business voters might be viewed as apathetic when it comes to going through the motions of getting or maintaining their place on the city’s electoral roll, but at least one major group bucks that trend.

Our online poll said it all this week. We asked our readers if they were happy with the half-a-percentage point cut in payroll tax and barely any of them thought it was a good idea.

Since the recent Federal election I have had numerous discussions dissecting the result and the following convulsions in Federal Labor.

A Pilot program at Western Australia’s dominant health fund, HBF, could soon be competing with local financial advisers if all goes to plan.