Joseph Poprzeczny

One way of examining Western Australia's record on tax is to compare overall business taxing level here to regimes in other states.

Well, it has happened again. Western Australia is to have another governor, a retired public servant, 67-year-old Dr Ken Michael, and the people were again denied a say in who would hold their state's most powerful constitutional post.

The State Government has allocated $40 million to help fast-track North West Native Title land claims in a bid to ensure the state's resources boom doesn't stall.

The marketing of Vasse Newtown, 15 kilometres south-west of Busselton, has been a remunerative and invigorating experience for Geoff Hanson of Subiaco-based Hanson Property Marketing and Management.

The Gallop Government has written to the management and board of the state's major newspaper, The West Australian, raising concerns about its political news coverage.

The magnetic pull of the Indian Ocean and Perth's metropolitan beaches have had a noticeable effect on property owners' pockets and bank balances.

A delegate attending a recent Liberal Party rural divisional conference unexpectedly announced he was fed up with living under three tiers of government – national, state and local – and said one should be scrapped.

Oceanfront Rockingham Beach Road is to become the venue of a new luxury apartment strip offering high-rise ocean views of Garden and Rottnest islands.

The State Government wants to overhaul health and safety inspection in the mining, petroleum and major hazards industries, proposing to shift responsibility to a new statutory body.

State Scene has three excellent informants with a good view into what's happening within Canberra's conservative elite headed by John Howard and John Anderson.

The Western Australian Liberals have formally rejected the Howard Government's bid to fully centralise industrial relations.

High-density residential approvals in Perth have fallen by more than 60 per cent during the past two quarters.

Perth's ‘great divide' is still a long way from being straddled.

Perth-based Griffin Group does not anticipate delays to the Westralia Square project despite the public troubles of its joint venture partner in the deal, construction giant Multiplex.

Labor's One Vote One Value legislation means the State's wealth-creating country and remote regions face the prospects of ever greater favouring of metropolitan Perth, according t

Buying and selling debts and IOUs continues a growth segment of the state's financial services sector.

National Lifestyle Villages (NLV) has set its sights on establishing 100 self-contained villages across Australia that will house up to 40,000 people over the next 20 years. And it's well and truly on the way to achieving that goal.

John Howard and his senior ministers, all of whom hold interstate seats, show all the signs of embarking upon megalomaniacal bureaucratic practices rather than remaining the levelheaded administrators that Australians rightly expect.

A state-of-the-art river water diagnostic system to help monitor algal blooms has been proposed for the Swan and Canning estuaries by the head of the University of WA's Centre for Water Research, Professor Jorg Imberger.

Now that Labor's One-Vote-One-Value legislation is finalised, let's consider how parties and voters, the latter allegedly its beneficiaries, have emerged from this drawn-out tussle.

The Pilbara's firs Native Title determination has been finalised by the Federal Court.

Western Australia must begin detailed planning for a second major integrated industrial hub to ensure a smooth transition for key heavy industries after the Kwinana Industrial Area fills, says the Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

An exercise worth doing after any election is calculating by just how much the victor has won.

The state's private contract cleaning sector is bracing itself for an expected 30 per cent plus downturn in business activity after Christmas 2005.

Graham Kierath has resigned as BGC chief Len Buckeridge's top business and government troubleshooter.

Last month, State Scene outlined how the National Party handed the balance of power in the upper house to the Greens by way of a secret, ideologically contradictory cross-preference deal, rather than ensuring it went to the conservatives, with whom most r

Moves to fast-track big urban renewal projects across the Perth-Fremantle metropolitan area foreshadowed by Planning and Infrastructure Minister Alannah MacTiernan will not mean the wholesale sidelining of local governments.

CALM has plans for a massive expansion, including new rules for large tracts of private land, as Joe Poprzeczny reports.

State Liberal leader Matt Birney has sold his stake in the successful Kalgoorlie-based spare parts retailer, Goldfields Auto Spares Pty Ltd (GAS), a business he co-founded 13 years ago as a 22-year old.

With the upper house still debating Jim McGinty's One Vote One Value Bill, which some Liberal MPs and all Nationals view unfavourably, it's worth considering several less publicised aspects of the ongoing issue of vote weighting in rural seats.