During the Questions Without Notice in the Western Australian Assembly, Margaret Quirk, the ALP member of Girrawheen was asked by the ALP's Jaye Radisch; "I refer the minister to recent assertions in the media that political correctness has gone wild and that even Christmas celebrations are no longer politically correct. What is the minister's position on Christmas celebrations?"

Quirk gave an interesting answer.

The War On Christmas

Nothing gets the conservatives going like the strawman that some majority convention or celebration is under attack by the latte-left do-gooders. It is easy picking for the media to increase their eyeballs. Radisch threw Quirk a softball, but her answer asked the real question, which she in turn answered;

The member asked a very important question and it is one that a lot of Western Australians are grappling with. How do we embrace multiculturalism, which has made Australia, and Western Australia in particular, a thriving and cohesive place, while still making room for traditional Australian beliefs and values? Western Australia now has residents from more than 200 different countries who speak more than 170 different languages, making it a state with one of the world's broadest cultural compositions. We must acknowledge that without the hard work of migrants, often in jobs for which they are overqualified, and their contributions to the community, Western Australians would not be enjoying the unprecedented level of wealth and prosperity that they now are. Clearly, those migrants have earned their place in the community and they deserve our respect, and that includes respect for their values, beliefs and religions.

In recent years certain parts of the Australian media have highlighted and chided local governments for dropping nativity scenes as part of their Christmas decorations, and have also run stories about schools dropping nativity plays from their end-of-year concerts.

She continues;

his year we have heard reports that some Western Australian councils are not supporting carols by candlelight celebrations. These sections of the media hold these incidents up as evidence that we are becoming too politically correct by embracing multiculturalism, and they claim that these groups do not want to offend non-Christians. I suspect that the suggestions to ban such observances, although well-intentioned, are misplaced zeal by persons attempting to be inclusive. It is my firm belief that these attempts do more harm than good. In our diverse community, blanket bans and one-size-fits-all decisions rarely work. When we make decisions, we need to acknowledge the complexity and strength of our diversity, from our indigenous community to our newest arrivals.

Clearly, Australia is predominantly a Christian society and there should be no fetter on celebrating Christmas traditions. Nevertheless, I do not think anyone would deny that we are seeing less of Christ in Christmas in Western Australia these days. I do not think it hurts any of us to remember the basic Christian message that non-Christians would also endorse; that is, compassion for the suffering of others, tolerance, respect and the pursuit of peace through justice. All these values enhance and enrich our community. As the new Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Interests, my focus is rightly on ensuring that new Western Australians are given opportunities to be equal members of the community, alongside multigenerational Australians. This is an essential goal if we are to have a harmonious society. I know that we have support from non-Christian groups. Ramdas Sankaran from the Western Australian Ethnic Communities Council says that he wants to see more, not fewer, religious and cultural celebrations.

The final sentence is the key, multiculturalism is about liberty and inclusive through expression. Limiting, dropping or banning displays of celebration are as myopic as the monoculturalism inherent in Australian conservatism.

My message to any schools, local governments and shopping centre owners that are confused about whether to display nativity scenes or support Christmas carols is that they should go ahead with them. They will have the support of the Western Australian community. They will have even greater support, however, if they choose, when the opportunity arises, to also celebrate the religious and cultural festivals of some of the state's other 100 or so religions.

We know we are in the silly season and we know it has truly arrived when these annual, but routine, beat-ups from the media about the impending demise of the nativity play and Christmas carols begin to surface. It looks as though we have to accept such sensationalism as part of the collateral damage of the silly season. It is a bit like food poisoning from a dodgy smorgasbord, bad taste Santa ties, shattered office photocopier glass and hangovers. I take this opportunity to wish every member, even the member for Nedlands, a happy Christmas.

The member for Nedlands is Susan Walker (Lib) who interjected during Quirk's answer.

Western Australia is claiming that they are being ripped off by the federal government collecting taxes for them and then redistributing it with a loss of four billion to Western Australians. Australia's other big exporting state, New South Wales, has found itself in a similar position. The vertical tax imbalance is the most insidious form of anti-federalism and must be stopped if Australia is to have a federalist political system.

We had the absurd situation last month where the NSW government ran an ad campaign against the federal government in order to secure more GST funding. That is just bizarre.

A government entity is supposed to have complete autonomy over its tax collection, tax distribution and the policies those tax funds support. This is not the case in Australia, and has not been since WWII when federal income tax was implemented as an emergency response.

That emergency is over sixty years old. The exception became permanent.

The current form of anti-federalism that is being practised was started by John Gorton who believed that the federal government was for making policy and the states were points of disbursement to implement those policies.

When the parties at the federal level talk of abolishing the states, they mean that there will be a unitary policy regime in Canberra - and councils will become the local means, funded federally, to implement those policies.

This gives little to no chance for local based politics, or local responses to local challenges.

In our current economy the states serve as sufficient differentiators to economic challenges. Western Australia and NSW are our two biggest exporters, but their economies are radically different.

Western Australia is commodity based and exports raw materials out of the country at a prodigious, and currently highly profitable rate. NSW is a service economy, exporting services and consuming at a prodigious rate in return.

The commodity and service based economies require different local responses to infrastructure, industrial relations, capital investment, education policy and even town planning.

Canberra does not understand these subtleties, being isolated from local needs, whereas Sydney and Perth are much, much closer to the local pressures and challenges.

Queensland is another powerful state that has adopted a differing economic model to both Western Australia and NSW. It uses the development-state model which is popular with nations such as Japan, China and South Korea.

Queensland faces different policy pressures and growth pressures to WA and NSW that are best met locally. A good example is Queensland subsidising petrol at the pump. They have to do so, by buying back the subsidy from the federal government. Which is absurd and a good example of how unitary federal policy in Canberra is an imposition and unable to react to local circumstances and needs.

Western Australian Treasurer, Eric Ripper, hoped that the federal government would invest Western Australia's missing four billion in WA's infrastructure. The Bwahahaha's from Canberra can be heard all way across the Nullarbor in Perth.

Western Australia, NSW and Queensland can take back their autonomy on tax collection, and consequently policy, by refusing to agree to allow the federal government to tax income in their states.

They could allow the federal government to continueto collect GST, but institute their own income tax system that is more equitable, and takes less from taxpayers.

This would not be hard. The federal government's income tax policy has been creep, creep and more bracket creep; along with tax them early and tax them hard as Australians cop high tax rates starting at 21K.

For federalism to continue to work the vertical tax imbalance is going to have to be solved. A federalist system is more politically stable and locally responsive than a unitary one. It is an important component of the Australian political structure.

It is imperative that the states become autonomous in the leveraging of tax.

Australia's internal economy can be broken into three in my opinion, the western economy which is resource based, the south-eastern economy which is services and manufacturing based and the Queensland economy which is a balance of both.

The western economy of WA and NT has benefited from the rise of India and China as manufacturers and the resultant pressure they have put on commodity prices. The Victorian Treasury released a discussion paper; A tale of two economies: the regional impact of Australia's resources boom [pdf] which looks at what this means for the other regional economies.

Commodity Price Pressures

As can be seen from the following graph, commodity prices have nearly doubled in the last two years from the demand by the BRIC economies (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

Western Australia and the Northern Territory have been the major beneficiaries of this commodity boom. Both of them have a high amount of their economic activity tied into resource extraction and exportation, nearly eighty percent of all economic activity. Resources make up 70% of the Northern Territory's exports and 80% of Western Australia's.

The report also draws the differences between the service economies of NSW and Victoria with Western Australia. Queensland is also included in the comparisons, but as the most balanced economy in Australia, with relatively equal amounts of services, resources, agriculture and tourism, the resource boom is balanced out.

As the paper notes, Australia's volume of exports hasn't increased drastically, but the value, or price we are getting for the commodities has. This has helped make Western Australia hot without large dollops of capital investment in productivity or infrastructure.

For instance, unemployment in Western Australia is nearly one percent lower than in NSW or Victoria. Wage growth is also higher in WA, nearly 1.5% higher than in NSW. Consumer Price Inflation [CPI] is higher in Perth than in NSW or Victoria.

The paper notes;

... employment in Western Australian mining and

construction has increased by 45 000 persons over the past three years, representing close to half of the total employment growth in that State over this period, and private investment in new machinery and equipment in Western Australia rose by 41 per cent over the two years to December 2005.

As to the economic impact of the high commodity prices, it means that the higher rate of return in resources will be pursued by capital. The paper argues that in the short term the benefits will be to the resource rich states, with possible long term flow on effects to the service economy states as national income increases.

Some of the downsides are that the higher prices effect the manufacturing sectors in the south-eastern states. Another is that the commodity boom puts 'upward pressure' on the exchange rate making the services and manufacturing sectors less competitive internationally.

As Commonwealth

Treasury economist David Gruen has observed, the exchange rate

"plays the role of a shock absorber" by "imposing significant restraint on those export and

import-competing sectors, including parts of the manufacturing sector, which are not

experiencing strongly rising prices for their output or are not directly exposed to the

booming sectors of the economy". This "Gregory effect" or "Dutch disease" implies that the

states with a larger share of agricultural, manufacturing and tourism exports are likely to be

adversely affected.

The effect was first recognised in the 1970s in the context of an earlier Australian resources boom (Gregory, 1976), and in light of the impact of North Sea oil

discoveries on European economies (Corden and Neary, 1982). At the same time, labour

and capital are being absorbed by the resource industries, so non-resource industries are

faced with higher labour and capital costs.

The paper's final conclusion is;

In the long run, labour mobility would result in patterns of net interstate migration shifting to

favour the relatively resource-intensive States, reducing disparities in unemployment rates

and wage rates between the States.

The resource States would also attract investment

from the rest of the country. In other words, permanently higher commodity prices are likely

to have a net positive impact on the size of the Australian economy, but change both the

industry composition and regional distribution of economic activity.

Western Australian Legislative Council member George Cash while discussing a bill on the Auditor-General makes an interesting wandering speech. He defends the worth of a bicameral parliamentary system as stopping executive corruption and believes it superior to a unicameral parliamentary system.

Cash rolls off a couple of corker sentences in the speech:

History reminds us that the grasp for absolute power, born of political expediency, is often the calling card of the politically insecure and the morally corrupt, who are often driven by a fear of political failure and political obscurity. It is at these times, when political wisdom gives way to political expediency, that the role and functions of an elected independent body become critical to protect the vulnerable citizens who look to, and rely on, the independent body to watch over and protect their individual rights and aspirations.

Cash's observation ascribes human passions to the grasp of absolute power. Often when dispassionately discussing technological political structures it is easy to forget the lengths that some individuals will go to in order to achieve absolute power. Then again, with the death of a tyrant like Pinochet, you are quickly reminded of how base a human can be in order to achieve and maintain that end.

I also like how he warns against political expediency over-riding political wisdom - something both parties in NSW should have listened to before passing the laws last year related to the Cronulla Riots. Like many in the upper houses, Cash is arguing for an independent upper house, presumably free from the party whip and executive discipline.

A larger excerpt of the speech from the Western Australian Hansard:

The Commission on Government also said much on the need to ensure that there was improved accountability to the Parliament by the Auditor General in the discharge of his functions, and, as I have indicated, the opposition has advocated a joint standing committee on that matter. There is no question, on reading the COG report, that the Commission on Government advocated a very important role, in fact a leading role, for the Legislative Council on both financial accountability and indeed the work of the Auditor General. As I have already said, regrettably the Auditor General Bill in its present form disregards many of the Commission on Government's recommendations on the role of the Legislative Council.

The supplementary notice paper has a number of proposed amendments to the Auditor General Bill. They are strongly supported by the opposition. We hope that the government will recognise the need for accountability and transparency, the important role of the Auditor General and the constitutional role of the Legislative Council, and agree to those amendments.

COG made significant comment in recommendation 32 on the Auditor General's power to access information. It suggested in recommendation 32 that the proposed joint audit committee participate in the selection of the Auditor General and that the process for selecting the Auditor General should be detailed in the proposed Auditor General Act. There is a proposal outlined in the Auditor General Bill, but it fails to give proper recognition to the Legislative Council in that process, and that is something that our amendments are designed to attend to.

Recommendation 33 deals with the accountability of the Auditor General. Again, the bill also deals with that particular issue, but, where necessary, amendments on the notice paper will deal with this matter. There is no doubt in my mind that some members of the Legislative Assembly, and, indeed, some bureaucrats and some members of the private sector, are keen to lessen the role of the Legislative Council. In particular, they would like to lessen the role of the Legislative Council committee system in its review of government legislation and the government's administration of the state generally. I should say, however, for completeness, that many members of the Assembly and many senior bureaucrats recognise and value the role and functions of the elected Legislative Council, and rightfully see it as vital in the checks and balances that are required in a democratic state. I remind those members of the Legislative Assembly and those members of the community - in particular, I am referring to some articles that have appeared in the press in recent times - who seek to denigrate the role of the Legislative Council that they may find that they are laying the foundations for corruption in the public administration of the state to be covered up and allowed to flourish. I cite, for example, the findings of the Fitzgerald royal commission in Queensland, which, in a state with a unicameral system of government, saw the Commissioner of Police jailed for corruption and the Premier charged with corruption.

I invite members to cast their minds back to the WA Inc years in Western Australia, where corruption was able to flourish because the government of the day was contemptuous of the attempts of the Legislative Council to expose the corrupt dealings of the government by hiding behind inadequate legislation and refusing to answer questions truthfully and table documents that would have exposed matters of administration that were, in my view, designed and intended to be corrupt. Again, I refer to the Royal Commission into Commercial Activities of Government and Other Matters that considered a number of those issues, and the findings of that commission.

The ability of the government to hide behind the notion of commercial confidentiality when challenged as to the legality and morality of its actions or dealings is in my view an open invitation to lay the foundations for a potentially corrupt administration. The Auditor General Bill before the house needs to be amended to ensure that where a claim of commercial confidentiality is made by a minister, the Auditor General is provided with the reasons for such a claim. That is already included in the bill, but there should also be an opportunity for the Auditor General to test the veracity of such a claim and report his opinion of such a claim to Parliament. Members may wish to refer to COG recommendation 2A(a) and (b) to see what COG thought about that proposition.

When I hear of calls to abolish the Legislative Council, I recognise that often they are calls for incontestable power and authority to reside in the Legislative Assembly, and, as such, because the government of the day has the numbers in the Legislative Assembly, it can control or block investigations into particular issues that it does not want exposed. When I hear of calls to abolish the Legislative Council, I am reminded of the epic warnings of historian John Emerich Edward Dahlberg Acton, better known as Lord Acton. He lived from 1834 to 1902. Some members may be aware that in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1877, he stated -

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

I argue that Lord Acton's clear and simple but profound statement has been interpreted and expressed in a number of ways over the years. For instance, sometimes it is expressed as a person's sense of morality lessens as his or her power increases; or the corrupting influence of power is total when one's power is total; or power corrupts people but corrupt people seek power. This corrupting influence of unbridled power applies particularly when a political leader, a minister or a politician remains in power for such a period that his words and deeds are not open to challenge by an independent body. When that occurs, the political leader, the minister or the politician will often succumb to the belief that power and wisdom are the same thing. It is when he is unable to distinguish between what is morally right and what is politically expedient that his moral judgment decreases as his political power increases, thereby laying the foundation for corruption to flourish.

History reminds us that the grasp for absolute power, born of political expediency, is often the calling card of the politically insecure and the morally corrupt, who are often driven by a fear of political failure and political obscurity. It is at these times, when political wisdom gives way to political expediency, that the role and functions of an elected independent body become critical to protect the vulnerable citizens who look to, and rely on, the independent body to watch over and protect their individual rights and aspirations. I say that in respect of the question that should always be asked by members of the community when someone suggests that there should be some diminution of the role of the Legislative Council as a house of review. I simply say that when that call is made, there is a need to ask the question: why is the call being made in those terms. When that question is asked and the answer given, it will often be because someone else wants greater power, and the reason that person wants greater power is so that he can go unchallenged in the actions that he takes. Of course, that is a one-way road to disaster. It is because of the great respect that I have for the constitutional role of the Legislative Council that I see it as so important that it involve itself in the issue of accountability and transparency when it comes to public issues in Western Australia.

The WSJ notes that migration around America has stalled with the dropping property markets. The areas hardest hit were the boom property markets; Phoenix being one of them.

The Census data show that the biggest falloffs were in the worst housing markets. In 2007-2008, the Phoenix area gained a net 51,000 domestic migrants, about half as many as two years ago.

And:

The migration slowdown, if it persists, could further delay the economic recovery in depressed housing markets such as Phoenix and Las Vegas. These places generally have a larger amount of unsold homes, and a disproportionate share of the economy is dependent on construction and other real estate-related trades.

Richard Florida also chimes in on the issue. I am part of the internal migration to Phoenix, so I find it all interesting, though I came for the sun and the tech work.

It is interesting to compare the internal migration of the US to Australia. Most of Western Australia's gains were not skilled Australian hands heading out west, instead the state's growth came from direct immigration and births.