Opinion

A CORPORATE fracas is often the public version of an ugly divorce.

THE issue of lobbying resurfaced in the media last week. WA’s current lobbying activities were first highlighted early this year and Premier Geoff Gallop has had a tortuous time explaining his Government’s handling of it.

WHILE new Australian Stock Exchange rules for corporate governance should be viewed as a victory for common sense, I can’t help wondering if it is all too little too late – and not just from the regulator.

TWO Saturdays ago a conference was held in the WA Constitutional Centre, one of the historic buildings on the hillock behind Parliament House.

THE war. It is a topic that is not far from everyone’s thoughts at the moment as our troops become involved in this controversial conflict.

IT was disappointing that REIWA was implicated in your story “Agent to Face Inquiry” (WA Business News, March 20 2003) as the apparent source of media comment on a matter concerni

TWO Geraldton-based fishing companies – Latitude Fisheries and Tohzai King – are gearing up to agist fish at sea.

THE issue of Western Australia’s freshwater needs persistently rates highly in party political and other local polling. Press reports showing quarter-full dams and constant chatter about the so-called greenhouse effect have had their impact.

THE recent setback for the development of the Burrup – with delays to the Canadian-based company Methanex’s plans to build a methanol plant – shows how fragile investment in major projects can be in a global economy.

ON 16th January, WA Business News published an article regarding Ningaloo Reef and Australian Wildlife Conservancy entitled “Wedged on the Reef”.

YOUR editorial of February 6 noted that it was “time to clean up the mess” in WA.  Your commentary stated that: “We simply haven’t got the economies of scale to efficiently d

LEADERSHIP is something we’ve been banging on about here at WA Business News for years.

SOON after the November 2001 Federal election, State Scene quizzed one of WA’s more insightful Federal MPs.

ELECTORAL Affairs Minister Jim McGinty’s decision to embark on a costly High Court challenge to the weighting of WA’s rural electorates provides a suitable opportunity to revisit this issue.

ALCOA watchers would have had a fascinating few days last week. The company’s Australian-born executive vice president John Pizzey was here for a few days and did some high profile presentations.

Zimbabwe concern

PHOSPHATE mining and tourism, the two economic staples of tropical Christmas Island – 2630 kilometres north-west of Perth – could be diversified.

JOE Poprzeczny’s piece “University Law Outdated” (WA Business News, February 20) was spot on.

IT has been a long time coming but it seems the fight to deregulate our shopping hours is on in earnest.

HERE are the first three paragraphs from an article in a local newspaper (Western Suburbs Weekly) that reached letterboxes around February 4.

WHAT a strange place Australia is.

IT’S an old chestnut, a centuries old law that is a key plank in our legal system – the fact that someone acquitted of a charge may not be tried again for that particular offence.

SOMETHING resembling a Mexican stand-off appears to have developed between Perth City Council (PCC) and Planning Minister Alannah MacTiernan, just when they should be in close contact. The PCC, for more than a year, has made it clear that it believed M

STATE Scene only rarely considers issues that can be categorised as international affairs.

Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan responds to Joe Poprzecny’s assertion

A COUPLE of weeks ago our political columnist Joe Poprzeczny wrote a column for State Scene entitled “That sinking feeling” about the rail line that separates Northbridge and the CBD.

AS January 2003 recedes we approach the Gallop Government’s half-way mark.

THE decision to name Professor Fiona Stanley as Australian of the Year is a very important one for WA.

INNOVATION is a strange concept in Australia. I have written before that our innovation is often the bush mechanic style of being able to keep things together with wire and string.

JOE Poprzeczny’s State Scene article ‘Wedged on the Reef’ of January 16 2003 was very appropriate considering the timing of current announcements concerning the Ningaloo Reef developments.

DICKENSIAN England gave us the blood-curdling Tale of Two Cities. Not to be outdone, WA is giving us the intriguing ‘Tale of Two Nor-West Resorts’. Back in the Dowding years the Labor government called for expressions of interest to develop a resort at

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