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.