WA Inc. remains a noisome memory from the 1980s as the worst political scandal in WA politics and one of the very worst in Australia’s history. In a complex series of deals between the Brian Burke Labor Government and the Labor Party and a number of selected WA businessmen, nearly $1 billion in 1980’s dollars of public money disappeared, largely through the so-called John Curtin Foundation, officially an ALP fundraising structure. There were secretive multi-million dollar deals and bizarre projects such as a non-existent petro-chemical complex ($408 million). According to Bevan Lawrence, who researched the matter most deeply, the government purchased shares from Robert Holmes a Court’s Bell Group for a loss of $155 million, and unlisted bonds from the Bell Group, later assessed as having no value, for $140 million. For a long time the public was kept in the dark and the full extent of misfeasance emerged only gradually.

The foundation was for a time the most politically powerful institution in WA, with big business in symbiotic relationship with the Labor Party. The whole thing was a major threat to principles of democratic government. At least one major businessman who refused to contribute, Midland Brick’s Ric New, a Liberal supporter, was persecuted and attacked in Parliament as ‘nefarious’. The government sold land at a knock-down price to establish a rival brick-works and punish New for his defiance. The full story of the Midland Brick affair is told in the book Burke’s Shambles by Patrick O’Brien and Anthony McAdam. Now, veteran WA political journalist Peter Kennedy has shone a new spotlight on the scandals in a book, Tales from Boomtown.

From the time the true nature of WA Inc. was becoming obvious a group of concerned WA Citizens, under the name ‘People for Fair and Open Government’ were pressing Brian Burke, his successor Peter Dowding, and Dowding’s successor as Premier, Carmen Lawrence, for a Royal Commission. Leading this were UWA Politics Professor Patrick O’Brien, Emeritus Professor Martyn Webb, Carmen Lawrence’s own brother, solicitor Bevan Lawrence, and some Liberal MP’s.

For some years these requests were resisted. When ‘People for Fair and Open Government’ staged a march up St George’s Terrace to Parliament House to demand a Royal Commission the government had cameramen filming the marchers with Labor lawyers in attendance, pointing out individuals. A number of the marchers believed they were being intimidated. Bevan Lawrence drafted terms of reference for a Royal Commission and delivered them to his sister. Carmen Lawrence agreed ‘information emerged on the level of impropriety. But the extent was not certain’. And that ‘people needed to be asked about it in an environment in which they had to tell the truth’.

Several powerful Labor figures, including Brian Burke, were strongly opposed to the Royal Commission – which Carmen Lawrence eventually agreed to – because of the damage it would do to the Labor party. In 1990 she established the Royal Commission into Commercial Activities of Government and Other Matters. Kennedy tells us, however, that there was another influential figure strongly opposed to the Royal Commission: Malcolm Turnbull, the present Liberal Prime Minister. Turnbull had also ‘made regular visits from Sydney to advise [Labor Premier] Peter Dowding.’

Turnbull told Kennedy that he had recommended the police should prosecute the guilty and then have the government say, ‘We are going to move on. So we have learned some lessons and we are open for business again.’ He added in his advice, ‘you have got to get back on the front foot’. Premier Dowding also consulted Turnbull, then in a law partnership with former NSW Labor politician Neville Wran. Turnbull said: ‘Dowding asked if Neville and I could come over and see if there was anything that could be done with the real mess they had got into with all these dealings with Bond, Holmes a Court and what was subsequently known as WA Inc.’ Kennedy comments: ‘The reality was that, despite the rationality of Turnbull’s position – and [ALP politician Bob] Pearce’s warnings – the demands for an enquiry were significantly interfering with the business of government… A commission would “lance the boil” causing pain in some quarters – including the ALP and Lawrence’s government – but would eventually provide “a new beginning”.’ He added ‘The scale of the impropriety had been just too big’.

After 21 month of hearings, the commission found that conduct and practices on the part of certain persons in government had been such as to ‘place our government system at risk’. Some Ministers had ‘elevated personal or Party advantage over their constitutional obligations to act in the public interest’. Burke’s behaviour in giving millions of public money to the foundering Laurie Connell enterprise Rothwells, the Royal Commission found, stemmed from ‘his desire to preserve the standing of the Australian Labor Party in the eyes of those sections of the business community from which it had secured much financial support’.

Premier Dowding ‘had presided over a series of disastrous decisions …’

And, most damningly: ‘Electoral advantage was preferred to the public interest… Personal associations and the manner in which electoral contributions were obtained could only create the public perception that favour could be bought, that favour would be done’