What’s the real cost of a promise?

And so we’ve come to the “fruitless argument about election costings” portion of the State election campaign.

That’s the bit where the Government, which has had access to all the analytic horsepower of the 100,000-strong public service for the past four years, baits the Opposition into submitting its election plans, many of which have been developed (by necessity) on the political equivalent of the back of an envelope, for costing by Treasury.

In 2013, Labor was successfully forced by Troy Buswell and the media into submitting its Metronet plan to Treasury for costing. When Labor’s sums didn’t add up, Buswell and the Liberals went for the jugular, declaring Mark McGowan couldn’t be trusted on financial matters.

In 2005, it was then opposition leader Colin Barnett under pressure on the question of costings, as this exchange with ABC Stateline presenter Rebecca Carmody demonstrates. READ MORE…

EXCLUSIVE: Turnbull won’t be back after “waste of time” WA visit

WA Liberal campaign headquarters has no plans for Malcolm Turnbull to return to WA before the March 11 election, with his visit on Monday described by a senior strategist as “a waste of time”.

The Prime Minister had not visited WA since August and spent less than 24 hours on the ground in a visit during which he made a detail-light announcement about naval shipbuilding investment and was exposed on the politically sensitive question of the GST.

“If anything it was a negative for us,” a Liberal source said. “He (Mr Turnbull) won’t be returning.”

The only saving grace, senior Liberals believe, was that Mr Turnbull was able to command a high-powered, deep-pocketed audience of senior business leaders willing to part with $10,000 a head to dine with the him at the city offices of merchant bank Macquarie on Sunday evening. READ MORE…

Turnbull brings a limp effort to WA

Has there been a more insipid appearance by a prime minister, allegedly in support of a State election campaign, than the limp effort offered up by Malcolm Turnbull this week?

Here’s Colin Barnett, a paragon of stability in these disposal political times, having seen five prime ministers and 24 premiers and chief ministers come and go since he won Government in September 2008.

From a Liberal point of view, Barnett’s a warhorse and a hero, trying against the odds to cling to power by way of an unlikely third election victory.

And so here, amid the fight of Barnett’s political life, comes Turnbull for his first visit to WA in more than six months, with nothing to say, nothing to announce, and nothing to offer West Australians other than to tell them what he won’t do.

Namely, anything about the single most pressing issue facing the State within the Commonwealth Government’s purview: our woeful share of the GST. READ MORE…

Barnett wasted his golden chance

Let’s play a little game of what if.

What if Colin Barnett hadn’t, immediately after his commanding re-election in 2013, wasted most of the first two years of his term getting bogged down in issues that sapped the Government’s momentum, energy and political capital?

What if he hadn’t delayed that first State Budget after the election by three months, canned all legislation on the notice paper, and drifted listlessly through his honeymoon period rather than taking decisive action on urgent political priorities?

What if he hadn’t wasted the best part of 18 months on a doomed local government reform process, that created noisy pockets of opposition all over the metropolitan area, while delivering virtually zero benefits to ratepayers or industry by way of improved efficiency, delivery of services or lower rates? READ MORE…

Labor won’t be derailed again

As it stands today, WA Labor will not submit Metronet — or any other of its policies or promises — for independent costing by WA Treasury in this election campaign.

That’s but one of the lessons Opposition Leader Mark McGowan and his leadership team have learnt from the 2013 election season.

Back then, McGowan came under extraordinary pressure — from media and his Liberal opponents — to submit Labor’s full suite of policies to Treasury, so that costing assumptions could be tested and voters could be reasonably assured that what he proposed to do as premier was backed with some fiscal rigour.

Having Treasury cost election promises also allowed the public a fair guesstimate of the overall impact of those promises on the big picture of the State Budget. READ MORE…

Uber’s disregard for the law of the land

There’s no question that Uber, the deep-pocketed technology company backed by billions of dollars of Silicon Valley venture capital, has upended established players in passenger transport —not just in Perth, but around the world.

The adjective most often applied to Uber is “disruptive” — a buzzword that has swept global investment markets as anyone with capital looks to find the next enterprise that will carve out profits from established industry sectors.

To date, “disruptive” has been mostly viewed as a virtue (unless, of course, you earn your living among the disrupted). Passengers of Uber — you can count your columnist among their ranks — value the superior service of the smartphone app, the simple cashless payment, the general standard of cleanliness of vehicles and friendliness of drivers, and yes, the cheap price.

But what if “disruption” is less about innovation and more about simply ignoring the law? What if the innovation is built on the back of selective adherence (at best) to outright dismissal of legislative legitimacy (at worst), while riding roughshod over industrial relations systems that have been developed for decades in Australia’s workers’ paradise, carefully negotiated to ensure a fair, cohesive society? READ MORE…

Subbie squeezed from both sides on building sites

We hardly need the retirement of construction union headkicker Joe McDonald to remind us that the building game is a rough and tumble industry, where the participants play for keeps.

Indeed, so urgent was lawlessness in the construction industry that Malcolm Turnbull marched us all off to a double dissolution election last year so that he could reinstitute a tough cop on the building industry beat.

That the Prime Minister has seemingly forgotten all about the Australian Building and Construction Commission should not be read as evidence that problems are magically gone. But equally, a mounting body of evidence suggests it’s hardly just the CFMEU responsible for disputation on our building sites.

David Rowe will testify to that. A Geordie lad by birth, Rowe has run an air-conditioning ducting installation business in Perth for the past 23 years.

But it’s not disputes with the unions that have pushed his business to the edge. Instead, Rowe has worn big losses on enormous government-funded infrastructure projects.

He’s just the latest subcontractor to complain about power imbalances in the building game, where the Government provides the dollars and appoints the head contractors, who then ruthlessly seek to push risk down the chain through an array of layers of subcontractors who actually do the construction work. READ MORE…

6PR: ACCC chair Rod Sims cries foul on union election ad

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chairman Rod Sims believes he’s being misrepresented in state election campaign ads, put together by the Australian Services Union to condemn plans to privatise Western Power.

Mr Sims joined The Morning Show’s Gareth Parker to explain his views.