OPINION PIECES

DETERMINED GRAIN GROWERS & SCIENTISTS HELPED BUILD WA SUCCESS

21 January 2022

WA’s colonial farmers, who endured crop failures through the 1830s, must have wondered if their European grains could ever succeed in the dry, sandy soil of their newly-cleared farms. To them, it would have been incomprehensible and entirely unbelievable that the grain growers of our wheatbelt would have harvested 22 million tonnes of grain in one year.

BLOW TO WA RESOURCES SECTOR

02 July 2021

When Scott Morrison next visits Western Australia on one of his rare excursions  across the Nullarbor, he will claim he cares deeply about our state and the hundreds of thousands of people employed in the resources industry.

FRONT OF MIND

15 June 2021

When the COVID- 19 pandemic eventually eases and the ban on most international travel comes to an end, Australians will jump at the chance to finally re-connect with the world. Many will
joyfully reunite with their friends and loved ones. Holidaymakers will again jet off to exotic foreign lands, and businesspeople will be able to re-engage with their clients and customers in the
world’s major cities. That will be the fun part.

LABOR MUST BE HONEST ON CLIMATE

27 May 2021

For more than a century, Australia rode on the sheep’s back. Our prosperity – indeed much of our national identity – was linked to our farmers’ ability to export wool.

WA FUEL SECURITY OUT OF GAS

20 May 2021

How good is smiling for the cameras outside a Queensland fuel refinery when 600 devastated workers at the BP refinery in Kwinana are still in shock at losing their jobs just a couple of months ago?

MINERALS A PART OF SOLUTION

11 March 2021

In the 1890s, following the sudden death of his wife, my great-great-grandfather Eli Pizer packed up four of children and his life in Melbourne to join the luck of the gold rush in Kalgoorlie.

PM NEEDS TO LEAD CHINA FIX

01 December 2020

Australia's relationship with China is complex, but in one sense it got simple yesterday when a Chinese government official posted an abhorrent, violent and concocted image of an Australian solider holding a knife to an Afghan child's throat.

ASKING FOR TROUBLE IF WE RELY ON CHINA

30 September 2020

In April 1985, Bob Hawke stood alongside Chinese Communist Party boss Hu Yaobang atop an iron-rich hill in the Pilbara and envisioned a new era of Sino-Australian economic relations.

STATES HAVE A ROLE IN WORLD

29 August 2020

It is hard not to be cynical about the Federal Government's latest hardline headline-grabbing national security laws to guard against foreign interference in light of the extraordinary inconsistency of this Government's failed approach to China.

A POST-PANDEMIC TRADE REVIVAL

26 August 2020

Albert Einstein once said that “in the midst of every crisis lies great opportunity”. For an open trading nation like Australia, the pandemic is an unparalleled crisis. The nation is facing its worst downturn since the Great Depression, along with recessions in key trading partners, severe disruptions to global supply chains and a rising tide of protectionism around the world.