This week in wa – 10 years ago

Former premier in the dock

A former Liberal Western Australia Premier was facing accusations of stealing this week 10 years ago.

Ray O’Connor was facing accusations in the District Court of Perth that he stole a $25,000 Bond Corporation cheque.

The charge flowed from the WA Inc Royal Commission.

Mr O’Connor’s successor as Premier, Brian Burke, and his deputy David Parker were also due to face charges arising from the Royal Commission later in the year.

Also on the political front, new Liberal leader John Howard avoided a confrontation with WA Liberal powerbroker Noel Crichton-Browne by taking the extraordinary step of appointing two leader’s representatives to the party’s State organisation.

Senator Crichton-Browne had been WA leader’s representative for Dr John Hewson and Alexander Downer, the two Liberal leaders who preceded Mr Howard.

Along with Senator Crichton-Browne, Mr Howard also appointed Opposition spokesman on finance Geoffrey Prosser.

Mr Prosser was to go on to become the Federal Small Business Minister after the Howard-led Coalition won Government in 1996, only to be forced out of that position due to a controversy over his retained ownership of his family business.

Back on the State front, Telecom Corporation of New Zealand subsidiary Pacific Star Corp was boasting a new contract to operate communications for the WA Government that it said would bring it substantial growth.

Another multinational, albeit a much larger one, Shell, was considering riding one of the waves of industrial relations change in WA by moving its workers to State workplace agreements to avoid having to deal with unions over wages and conditions.

The company wanted its 1,400 refuellers to leave their collective awards and go to the WPAs.

Woodside Petroleum, a company part-owned by Shell, had already taken the step of putting its workers onto WPAs.

On the business front, a demand for senior managers in WA was driving up the overall market for executives.

One recruitment expert said the private sector in WA had doubled the overall demand for executives in January and produced its highest demand for three years.

Global chemicals company DuPont was forecasting a higher demand for titanium dioxide and announced an increase in rutile capacity at its Bunbury operation.

Production was to be increased by about 4,000 tonnes to about 79,000 tonnes.

Production had returned to normal after a five-day shutdown at BHP’s Griffin offshore oilfield due to a cyclone warning.

In the alumina sector, Australian producers were talking with Russian smelters over future of supply.

To meet the expected global demand increase Alcoa’s Wagerup refinery was in the process of boosting its output by 1.7 million tonnes.

Australasian Mines announced to the Australian Stock Exchange that it had secured a $7 million financing package to develop its Red, White and Blue gold mine near Norseman.

Experts in the banking sphere were talking about how unlikely a rationalisation in the regional bank sector was with State-owned entities such as BankWest heading for a float.

Ten years on and BankWest is now part of the Halifax Bank of Scotland and WA’s other major regional bank of the time, Challenge Bank, is part of Westpac.

In the legal sphere a Perth woman a court case against pharmaceutical player Upjohn that was expected to run five weeks ended in just one day with a $400,000 out of court settlement.

The plaintiff took her case to the Perth district court claiming her back condition from a minor traffic accident had deteriorated after three spinal injections of Upjohn’s anti-inflammatory corticosteroid Depo-Medrol.