Opinion

Federal treasurer Peter Costello has convened a two-man inquiry into Australia’s tax burden and how it lines-up against so-called “comparable countries”.

The ‘what if’ question posed last week is entertaining people in places far higher than that occupied by Briefcase.

Are the owners of the Perth Convention Exhibition Centre finding out something they should have known from the start? That running such a business is little tougher than most other infrastructure markets?

Tributes have flowed in from business and the community leaders following the death earlier this week of 73-year-old Perth property tycoon Bill Wyllie after a long battle with cancer.

Economists are born pessimists. That’s why some of them are warning that the boom times being generated by China’s demand for commodities will not last.

Bill Wyllie is one of Western Aust-ralia’s success stories, perhaps most notably because we got him back.

Let’s be frank about the performance of the second Gallop Government in its first year, 2005; it was lacklustre.

Last month, former Labor premier Carmen Lawrence was asked during a television interview about her predecessor, Brian Burke, his role within the Labor Party and his relationship with government.

On March 16 last year, someone paid $5.50 for a parcel of shares in Fortescue Metals Group. It was the peak price on the day.

I had an interesting discussion about the rising costs of oil with Motor Trades Association executive director Peter Fitzpatrick recently.

Are Australia’s major goldminers profitable, or not?

I am always fascinated at how corporate history gets written and rewritten over time; how some people never escape their past while others seem to have a teflon coating when it comes to their mistakes.

By dint of perseverance and survival at the upper echelons of the NSW and Federal Liberal parties John Howard has come to intrigue a growing cohort of journalists, especially those based in Sydney, his hometown, and Canberra, where he’s at work some weeks

The present brawling between barristers regarding their ability to talk to the media is fascinating.

Oh dear. It looks like we’ve inherited a premier who is having big ideas and wants to do things, a very dangerous combination.

Last week’s State Scene touched on the fact that the National Party has decided to go it alone electorally, to refuse to enter into coalition with the Liberals, under any circumstances.

Almost certainly three years from last, this, or next Saturday, will be next election day, since February Saturdays have become the traditional poll days in Western Australia.

Hands up anyone who expects the stock market to rise between now and Christmas?

Andrew Forrest is without doubt one of Western Australia’s most intriguing characters. I had the great pleasure to hear Mr Forrest speak last week at one of WA Business News’s Success and Leadership events, and it was a great opportunity to gain insight

It’s not often you can easily pick the best or worst investment on the stock market. Right now, however, the worst stands out like sore thumb.

The finger pointing by all those involved in the Westpoint Group debacle would almost be humorous if so much money was not at stake.

The last State Scene for 2005 highlighted the ways major political parties make it excruciatingly difficult for their candidates to be unseated by Independents.

Australia’s great grape glut is causing wine producers no end of pain. But in Western Australia there seems to be a variation emerging on that theme – the great grape shortage.

The wine industry’s woes are not self-inflicted and are an important example of what happens when government decisions start distorting business in an unhealthy way.

Despite some people contending otherwise there was, from the moment Geoff Gallop resigned, never any doubt that Alan Carpenter would become premier.

I have never believed in the regulated monopoly powers of AWB Ltd or its predecessors.So it is perhaps unfair for me to use the appalling news of the Iraqi wheat scandal to add to the call for the archaic wheat export monopoly to be scrapped.

There’s little doubt all state MPs learned the obvious lesson from Liberal leader Matt Birney’s unpleasant pre-Christmas encounter with the Privileges Committee – don’t secretly slip amendments into your Parliamentary Financial Interests Register, or else

If a man in a pub offered to sell you the Sydney Harbour Bridge for $50,000, would you write out a cheque on the spot?

Steel, in case hot-headed speculators playing the Australian stock market had not noticed, is essentially made by blending two materials – iron ore and coal, with a bit of limestone tossed in, plus nickel and other stuff for speciality steels.

It's not often that a political announcement genuinely catches everyone by surprise, but Geoff Gallop’s decision this week to step down as premier and retire from politics certainly falls into that category.

Last week, State Scene canvassed some of the underlying reasons for the collapse in Liberal leader Matt Birney’s standing among party colleagues during the closing months of 2005, which may well result in the emergence of pressure for his replacement duri

The ranks of those Liberal MPs who are wondering if their leader, Matt Birney, will still be in his position on April 17, his wedding day, swelled markedly just before Christmas, when the Parliamentary Privileges Committee adjudicated on his secret insert