*Firstly, isn’t growth supposed to generate wealth well over and above the costs?*

Well it does, Ludwig. The miners are the highest paid workers in
the country. Their income tax goes to Canberra. Company tax goes
to Canberra. Offshore oil and gas royalties go to Canberra.
WA is left with the extra infrastructure costs, for more power,
water, roads, etc, in what is a largely undeveloped part of the
country. Services and infrastructure in the NW are actually pretty
poor. Just recently we had a traveller on OLO, bitching about them.
The money has to come from somewhere. Other States don't have all
these extra costs and I don't think that WA should have to bring
in the pokies to fund it either. I am glad they do not exist here.

*Secondly, you agree with me that continuous population growth is bad news*

Yes Ludwig, but within reason. If you look up the figures you will
find that WA popoulation per sq km is around 3 people, its one of
the least inhabited places on earth. Australia needs the money to
pay its bills, the Eastern States have proven incapable of generating
the exports to do it. Its either WA keeps moving or Australia = a
banana republic. Keating understood all that.

*I think that too much commonwealth expenditure is going into it and that it really should be wound back.*

So give us back our GST, the onshore royalties are ours anyhow.
We'll do it ourselves, like we do most things. We really don't
need that wall of officialdom from Canberra to function. They are
largely out of touch with this part of the world anyhow and most
of our trading is with overseas.

*you are referring to Senator Joe Ludwig*

Oops, sorry, I should have made that clear :)

Yabby,

I am willing to consider yes WA is big and new with special needs for roads. However, had your government - both now and past had the foresight to get some infrastructure into country regional this might be better.

*When our meatworks were screaming for workers and could not find them
locally, they tried to get 457 workers. But alot of the time they
could not even do that, Canberra red tape.*

True and you know who put that tape in place too.

** Ludwig did not have a clue as to what ishappening in the North of our State. He was to busy listening to hysterical Eastern States city housewives to consider our pastoralists, who now wear the cost of his foolishness. Terry **

Ludwig, no problem to tell you wants going on. These people who send knowingly millions of our Australian live stock to be tortured to death AND put the poorest of Indonesian farmers into bankruptcy
have been told for years to build some abattoirs and do value adding.

They didnt- so when you look at just that- perhaps we ought not allow them their own state.

At least until they can prove they can run their own affairs.

Dont you just love the way they blame Joe Ludwig- get my pint.

We dont get to blame anybody bar ourselves if our business flop ah

Canberra is a city not an entity. The taxes paid into general revenue come from all taxpayers (not just WA residents) and go to pay for infrastructure all over Australia.

Red tape is rife in local, State and Federal Government. Getting rid of one layer does not necessarily improve the situation, it just moves it around.

WA is part of Australia. If the criterion for separtism was dissatisfaction with the Federal Government, wouldn't we all be raising the separatis flag evertime a policy was implemented to our disatisfaction. State Governments are pretty woeful at times too.

Certainly more money should be ploughed back into developing those mining towns which are characterised by overpriced housing (detrimental to the non-mining workers who do not benefit directly from the high wages in WA's two-speed economy). This is despite the instability of fly-in-fly-out type arrangements for the most part.

Queensland mining towns have the same problems. Many local councils have had to provide free housing just to get people not involved directly in mining to move there to support the huge influx of mining workers.

West Australians do seem to feel a bit separated by virtue of a large desert space inbetween. Maybe if the Commonwealth Government was located in the middle, it would quell this sentiment. Adelaide maybe?
:)

Yabby, while there might be merit in some of your arguments, secession is surely not the way to deal with them.

I think that there are real and imagined disparities at all levels across Australia and that the Federal Government deserves to get a lot of flack over it, as do State Governments. I really don’t think that WA is getting worse treatment than other states in this regard.

Sure, we should be pushing hard for our fair share of the national handout here in the west, but the threat of secession should not be a part of it.

As Pelican says:

<< Red tape is rife in local, State and Federal Government. Getting rid of one layer does not necessarily improve the situation >>

State governments are really just as bad as the Feds when it comes to fair and equitable funding. So if WA was to secede, it would still have the same sorts of problems, or perceived problems, and you would still have to push hard for funding in areas that you feel it is inadequate.

continued

Presumably a referendum would be required for secession to succeed. And the history of referenda suggests that the no vote would win out, unless there are compelling reasons for secession, in the minds of the people.

What compelling reason could there be?

There is only one that I could think of and that is if the wealth being generated in the Pilbara, Northwest Shelf, etc, really is promised to translate into big gains at the personal level for WA citizens, once it is kept entirely within the state and not shared with the rest of the country.

Now, if this was to be the case and a big wealth differential did result, there would be a huge exodus from ‘Eastralia’ into ‘Westralia’.

While that might delight the pants off of Colin Barnett and his big bizzo buddies, it would work to progressively dilute the financial benefits on a per-capita basis and it would heap more pressure on seriously stressed water supplies and on other resources, infrastructure and services.

In short, a wealthier west would no doubt increase population growth considerably, with all the negative factors that go with it. Either that or disincentives for people to move to WA would have to be implemented. But that won’t happen in a fit with the current government or anything like it.

There would also be an ongoing big lot of resentment from Eastralia about the sudden loss of a huge source of income.

So, do the perceived benefits of secession outweigh the negatives? Not by a long way, I would think.

What compelling reason could there be?

There is one very good one. WA are pretty much dependent on exports- me so than many others accept NT.

Now IF funds were used to fix roads and put some value adding in- bring in migrants and new comers to regional towns that would be a good thing.

So long as they were not just going to sit back and make coal their only industry with all the eggs in one basket it might have Merritt.