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An interesting read I thought (even though it is on a News Ltd site )
Nothing to show for WA
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.
http://www.news.com.au/perthnow/stor...2-2761,00.html