The FIFO thing has been changed to FO (fly out) and diddley squat to show for it
Nothing to show for WA boom
Liam Barlett
January 17, 2009 05:00pm
WEST Australians have every right to feel dudded. The so-called unrivalled boom has come and, according to the official figures, gone, and has left not much.
Take a drive through city streets and try to get a sense of what the ``once-in-a-lifetime'' economic picnic delivered.
There's the odd new chrome and glass monolith with the name of a mining company stapled to the side of it, but apart from that, where's the public benefit? Where's the social dividend associated with all the prosperity?
Time lapse video of the Perth city skyline with the ferris wheel spinning
We've been rolling in excess funds for the past five years and, still, we have no new football stadium, no new indoor sporting venue and no new state museum. The Northbridge rail line is still above ground and the city foreshore remains sterile and undeveloped.
The East Perth power station site has been left to rot, the mothballed Entertainment Centre is a terrible eyesore and the much-vaunted urban renewal around the WACA Ground is half-baked.
Apologies at asking another rhetorical question, but how is all this non-achievement possible given the vast amount of wealth that has flowed through state coffers?
In 2004, with the boom kicking in, former treasurer Eric Ripper booked a surplus of $799 million. The following year it delivered $1.104 billion, then $2.59billion, $2.25 billion and last year $2.507billion.
And remember those riches are independent of the billions that we sent off to Canberra to fatten the national wallet.
Based on those numbers, Mr Ripper had at least $9 billion over and above the normal operating cost of running the state to spend on infrastructure from which all taxpayers could benefit.
Regrettably, the Gallop government delivered a southern train line that was started by the Court government, a broken election promise to sink the Northbridge line and an indoor stadium, which is still to be finished.
Similarly, the Carpenter government dithered on development and allowed self-interest from the football lobby to delay, perhaps terminally, the construction of a major outdoor stadium.
On the strength of that, an outsider would be forgiven for thinking that treasurer Ripper was publicly horse-whipped, tarred, feathered and sent to socialist re-training camp in Siberia. But no, wait for it, Mr Ripper has actually been promoted.
Notwithstanding that his record with the purse strings probably qualifies him to be Bernie Madoff's accountant; this bloke is now the Leader of the Opposition.
Mind you, he has been leading for quite some time. He led us all into higher land taxes, higher stamp duties and higher payroll taxes. He led an escalation in government spending that went from $12 billion to $16.8 billion in the same period of record surpluses. So, not only did we completely blow the farm, but at the same time, we were spending like a drunken sailor on the public service. A 30 per cent increase over five years and what do we have to show for it?
The answer is becoming monotonous; not much.
The best that can be said is that we now have better-paid nurses, teachers and police officers, who are all now ranked a lot higher in national terms to their respective colleagues.
But given that most of them were woefully underpaid for so long, that really doesn't say a lot.
The lack of any decent physical legacy would also be understandable if we could point to a major issue and consider it fixed but try as I may, I can't find one. Did the extra spending solve the problems in our health system? Of course not.
Is our education system the best in the country as a result of the extraordinary run of prosperity? Certainly not.
Truth be told, we spent half of it arguing the merits of OBE and the other half trying to find the courage to axe it completely.
The mismanagement of these ``boom'' dollars is verging on the criminal when you consider the achievements of Victoria under vastly different circumstances.
The world-class Rod Laver Arena, the Southbank precinct, Docklands and Federation Square are all excellent public projects that were delivered to Melburnians on the back of a lot fewer royalty receipts from the big end of town than we've enjoyed. The Victorians didn't have our stellar growth rate, nor did they enjoy record real estate development but then, they didn't have SpongeBob Squarepants in charge of the purse strings either.
Even Sydney managed to massively redevelop Darling Harbour during a time when New South Wales was a relative basket case compared with WA. And therein lies our next problem.
Now that the boom party is over, the bulk of any federal infrastructure funds will go straight to those states in the most precarious economic positions and that means, as usual, the West will be nowhere near the lion's share.
Sadly, the level of public debate doesn't seem to indicate that any of this weighs particularly heavily on the minds of our politicians. Most of their bleatings in recent weeks have centred on either distancing themselves from the odious Brian Burke or complaining that the Royalties for Regions scheme is going to paralyse the state's development.
Well, here's a newsflash; why shouldn't country taxpayers get a chance to blow it all? Our public leaders have spent the past five years blowing the bank on a capital city which has virtually nothing to show for it, so why not give some of it back to country towns that have long been ignored.
There are too many regional centres that badly needed government assistance during those boom years, but instead were used and abused by the pragmatists at the top of the terrace.
Port Hedland, Tom Price and Karratha require public monies now. So do Esperance and Kalgoorlie. There's a desperately needed upgrade for the Busselton jetty, which has been left to rot away in Geographe Bay, and so the list goes on.
This state has spent half a decade playing horse while the national economy has been delighted to be the jockey and with the race all but over, the trophy cabinet is bare.
Oh sure, if you're in the market for a cheap holiday home down south or a second-hand Marloo with only 10,000 on the clock, things are looking up. But if you had a longer-lasting legacy in mind, forget it.
Perth is a great city that still has a special feel to it, but it could have been so much more.
And as the job queues get longer and the royalty cheques from the miners get smaller, one can't help but think the opportunity of a lifetime may have been missed with a completeness that is staggering to comprehend.
*Liam Bartlett is a reporter with 60 Minutes on Channel 9. The program returns on Sundays at 7.30pm from February 22. Liam will write on a monthly basis for The Sunday Times.
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