Opinion

Western Australia is in the middle of a once-in-a-generation boom, but you'd struggle to know that if you had closely followed the state election campaign.

As so often happens in the unpredictable hurly-burly of party political rivalry, while you're looking one way there's something happening elsewhere that's at least equally, and often far more, important.

There are many who say the end of the Olympics in Beijing will signal the culmination of the long global growth phase driven by China.

Long-time State Scene readers may recall advice offered in this column to the Gallop government back in May 2002 on the best way to administer the then-emerging but now blossoming lobbying industry.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.