"It's amazing how they forget the people once they get over the line. The solar panel program has been incredibly successful and many have borrowed to do their bit and reduce greenhouse gas production"

A truly typical Labor "success" - not only do our taxes subsidise the purchase for those wealthy enough to afford the fraction of the cost they are required to foot, the power companies are forced to buy excess power generated during sunlight hours at about 54c per kwh, then sell power to the same people at about 22c per kwh during the rest of the time (SA figures).

This has the effect of increasing the average price per kwh charged and thus while the better-off with solar PV panels on their roofs may receive a credit, the rest of us are charged more per kwh in consequence than we would be otherwise - a double whammy of our taxes paying for the purchase of assets by a select few while we less privileged are faced with finding the money to pay larger electricity bills.

"The rest of us" particularly includes those who rent and, or, like me, live in units who cannot, even if we had the money, participate in this classical case of taxing the poor to give to the rich - "middle class welfare" does not do it justice.

As for doing "their bit and reduce greenhouse gas production" yeah, right; those I know are honest enough to say they did it mostly for financial gain.

So, if the author considers the increased mining tax in WA to be a really bad thing, I wonder what he would consider to be a good move by the Libs?

The mining tax is a strange example to use here. I mean, OF COURSE the people should be getting a bigger cut from our mineral wealth. Barnett was right to increase royalties. And Swan is also right to reduce the GST to WA as a result (which would mean an increase for the other states), as the profits from WA’s minerals should not just be distributed to Western Australians, but approximately equally to ALL Australians.

This move by Barnett is really quite amazing, as the traditional relationship between government and big business is one of government bending over backwards to accommodate their every wish. In fact, this and the resultant never-ending economic and population growth is the biggest problem, with both Liberal and Labor.

Sure, there are heaps of things that we can be critical of, with both the Libs and Labs, but it makes no sense to examine all this minutiae while ignoring the elephant in the room that is continuous rapid growth with no end in sight, which is just taking this country in a direction rapidly away from a sustainable future.

Isn’t this the most important thing of all?

Dear Mike Carey, one of the great joys in today’s politics is provided by such as yourself. You article reminds many of us of all the reasons why the ALP is now going beyond a toxic brand.

What you fail to understand is that it is the values embraced by this type of surreal support for the ALP that is killing it.

Keep up the good work and thank you.

Funnily enough I found both the NSW solar tariff decision and
the WA iron ore royalties to be great decisions!

Paying people 60c/kw/h, subidised by everyone else, is typical
of economic mismanagement at its finest. What we've landed up
with is another "you beaut" scheme, where the rortsters move in,
until it is shown to be unsustainable and crashes when reality
hits. That is exactly what has happened.

Colin Barnett had every right to increase the royalty on iron ore
fines and bring them up to the rate of lump ore. He had warned
the Feds that he would do it, long beforehand. 7.5% royalty is
not unreasonable.

Fact is that WA is already seen as little more then a cash cow
by much of the East. There is talk that we'll get back as little
as 30c in the Dollar on our WA GST payments.

The costs of developing all this infrastructure in WA is being paid
for by WA taxpayers. We need the extra funding for that, given you
all have your hands out, the moment we make a bit extra.

IMHO we'd be far better off in the West, seceding from you lot in
the East. We could quite easily do without Canberra. For us its
nearly all costs with few benefits. Good on Barnett, he got that
one right.

Yabbs, I think we're 100% in agreement.

My work colleague got solar panels, and I warned her I tell ya. I told her that kinda deal wouldn't last very long. It just couldn't.

I find it interesting given the hoopla, that those who are 'helping the plannet' are only happy to do so at the 60c rate :-)

The Premier of WA it should be remembered, is the man who argues that his famous water canal from the Kimberleys will work OK because water will run “down” to Perth from the North due to gravity.
Now with a bloke like that running the show, how can he be wrong

*I find it interesting given the hoopla, that those who are 'helping the plannet' are only happy to do so at the 60c rate :-)*

Houllie, very true. Not only that, if they use their washing machine
at night, they can buy that power for 20c at night, then resell the
energy created during the day, for 60c. Smart ones will no doubt
run a wire from the neighbours and feed it back into the system
making a handy profit. Who pays? We all do, its one of the reasons
why the cost of electricity has risen, ie to pay for these
schemes. Magazines are now full of ads trying to flog panels,
with fly by night operators everywhere. When the Govt doshes
our billions, watch them all run. Last time it was insulation.

Sarnian, not correct. Barnett did think that he could channel
water down from the north, by decreasing the building method of
the channel. But he never claimed that there was no pumping cost.
If you can show me where it did claim it, go ahead. I certainly
never heard that one.

The thing is, because of the increased mining, WA now needs to
build desalination plants for the extra water. Royalties paid by
mining should be bankrolling these, its not. The East is making
no allowances for this kind of expenditure, they want their greedy
little paws on what are essentially WA minerals. As if they don't
screw enough out of the miners and out of the West already. Give
us back our GST, we pay it. But no, Canberra's coffee club culture
needs it to maintain their lifestyle.

But he never claimed that there was no pumping cost.
If you can show me where it did claim it, go ahead. I certainly
never heard that one.

He said it on talk back radio.

Yabby, as a resident of one of the rust bucket States being supported by WA, I wholeheartedly support your sentiments.

I guess there is some rationale, feeble thought this may be, that some States are disadvantaged economically through not having WA’s resources. This assumes wrongly that other States without resources should benefit from these resources rather than make their own economies work for them.

The ACT for example is, according to the latest ABS report, the fastest growing economy. They are not doing this through mining or manufacturing. I suspect they are achieving this through a growing bureaucracy funded by the tax payer, a hefty slice of your GST and a big contribution from your economy through direct taxes.

Tasmania likewise is fast establishing a parasitic relationship with the rest of Australia whilst they enjoy their sustainable “Good Life” at the expense of other Australians.

The economic impacts of the yet to be finalized Health Reform, Mining Tax, Carbon Tax, Tax Summit and GST redistribution all need to be challenged by the States.

If it takes the threat of WA seceding to bring the message home to these ideologically driven, tokenistic Federal bullies, then good.

As a Sovereign Nation, WA would become an international destination so air fares to Perth would be much cheaper which would boost tourism.

Can you please get on with this quickly as our economy is fast approaching ruin.

"The Liberal Party has begun to make a sick Labor Party look good."

Not yet but give it time and they will.

The Libs will then get booted out, Labor will get back in and the Labor Party will then make a sick Liberal Party look good.

So on and so forth ad infinitum, until both parties while spiralling around each other in ever decreasing circles will eventually find themselves up each others wrecked'ums.

Just like the star bellied sneetches in Dr Seuss but probably not with the same happy outcome.

Meanwhile the people try to cope the best they can and party stooges from both sides will write articles like this.

With the advent of Getup! and the like, the shrilling from all sides of politics as they suffer increasing bouts of relevance deprivation syndrome will no doubt increase.

Both the WA and NSW Premiers should be commended for their respective decisions.

In view of the Federal Labor Government's hunger for unjustified big spending on projects, e.g. pink batts, BER, NBN, how can it be trusted to spend big new taxes, such as the resources rent tax, rationally on alleged infrastructure projects? The WA Govt constitutionally is entitled to impose and raise mining royalty rates, and can be expected to make a much better fist of choosing and carrying out infrastructure projects on which to spend that tax revenue.

Given the absence of any compelling scientific evidence of the existence of dangerous anthropogenic global warming, there was never any scientific or economic justification for government subsidising of renewable energy production. However, the NSW Labor Govt in choosing to subsidise solar energy, went overboard in setting the solar feedin tariff at 60c per kWh. The NSW Premier is right in reducing that feedin tariff, albeit relatively mildly. It is better for the new Liberal Govt to be inconsistent, than to be consistently wrong by maintaining the 60c per kWh rate.

"The Liberal Party has begun to make a sick Labor Party look good."

According to the polls, apparently not.

That Wayne Swan is proving like Juliar, also to have a questionable interpretation of the truth, Labor credibility is at an all time low.

It's quite sad indeed how fast Barry O Farrel decided to run with Labor's backflip on the Solar Rebate while itself starting to backflip over the Development veto.

The worst part is that he hypocritically feels the Solar Rebate can be enforced retrospectively despite the contracts signed-

but contracts signed under a dubious shift of legal planning and veto powers, and might not even be legal- doesn't qualify?

I'll just chime in here are say I agree with Yabby, Houellebecq. The 60c solar rebate looks like a very poor way to kick start green energy to me. There are lots of better ways you could spend that money and go green. For example improving Sydney's abysmal public transport by building electric rail lines would be far better. It would pump money into the local economy, as opposed to sending it to china to pay for solar panels. Trying to jump start local industry building solar thermal, wind turbines - anything really, would be better then subsidising yet more Chinese imports.

As for the WA mining tax increase - I love the irony. The federal super profits scheme seemed to be a better deal for the miners, particularly the small ones. It only was only levied when the mine was making money. Now the guy that was championing the miners cause has levied something worse on them. Politics is nothing if not entertaining.

Yabby - your comment about mining causing increasing the WA infrastructure demands is undoubtedly correct, but hides a point. The increase in infrastructure is mostly caused by a increase in population. If that population was sourced from other states then there would be money to syphon from them to WA. After all the manufacturing states are suffering badly right now from the $20 china power drill phenomena, and are bleeding manufacturing jobs badly as a consequence. Putting pressure on those displaced workers to take up the opportunities created by the mining boom was the obvious thing to do.

But that didn't happen. Instead we used, and indeed still are using immigrants to grow the population in WA and the other states. As a consequence all are struggling to pay for the increased infrastructure required - not just WA. It's a policy started by Howard, and continued by Labour. Both look equally incompetent to me.

No one can make Labour look good. The same applies to the Coalition.

We live in a time of betrayal. Labour leadership has betrayed its worker and social justice constituency. Liberal leadership has betrayed their conservative constituency. (Just as Murdock and Fairfax have betrayed their central core of readers.) I can hardly remember a time when the Nationals last had any leadership that went beyond hot air to actually consistently refuse to betray the country people on significant issues.

For a growing number of people, voting is about punishing whoever angers them most.