Talk:Richard Court

Errors in this article
Unbelievable the errors I encountered in this article which I have now fixed. It said that Court became Liberal leader in 1990. He actually became leader in 1992. It said that he stood down as Opposition Leader in 2001 after allegedly attempted to convince Julie Bishop to take over the leadership from him. He did not alledgedly did that, he definitely tried to convince Bishop to do just that, he himself revealed it publicly but Bishop said no. It thus said that Colin Barnett the deputy Liberal Leader was elected unopposed instead. He was no longer the deputy when he was elected leader. Barnett vacated the deputy's job to contest the leadership but was defeated by Court. In fact Court recontesting the leadership was to stop Barnett becoming leader and to allow time for Bishop to switch from Federal to State politics to take over the leadership from Court. Also whilst Barnett was elected leader following Bishop's refusal he was not unopposed. --The Shadow Treasurer (talk) 03:58, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Agreed re 1992 - he became deputy in 1990, one of the downsides of public editing is stuff like this can sneak in without people actively watching the article.
 * The matter regarding the succession - which I would like to see better documented - is confusing. Firstly, there is no proof or evidence that Court or Bishop were involved in such a deal. The speculation was going on almost entirely on the front page of the West Australian newspaper. I have no doubt there was talk of such a deal in high places, but who was involved and to what extent was always speculation and is anyone's guess, and guesswork is not WP's forte. Court was certainly blamed for it, there's no doubt of that, but people get blamed for all sorts of things in politics. Then, the succession. I've had to go back to the sources to try and figure this one out, but it seems that on 21 February there was a leadership ballot which narrowly confirmed Court, at which Dan Sullivan became the deputy leader as Barnett did not contest (this was following Barnett's accusations of "treachery" against Court because Court would not endorse him and approached two other people to run). News of the deal was starting to reach Liberal MPs at this point but not yet all - Barnett himself didn't know until the West Australian report that day (21st), with a quotable "choked on my Weet-bix" quote. Everything then blew up in the media and party room over the next couple of days, we have Court "falling on his sword" on 23 February and Barnett elected as leader on 26 February with Sullivan once again as the deputy. My confusion over unopposed is that this is exactly what the media reported at the time, but when the thing was actually held, Rod Sweetman decided to run and that was reported in the articles which reported the result. Orderinchaos 04:35, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

The word "allegedly" is about something that is rumoured to have existed, this is not case with the plan for Bishop to take over from Court and the following article shows the existence of the plan: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/stories/s251938.htm --The Shadow Treasurer (talk) 19:31, 3 April 2010 (UTC)

so lame, the link to 'achievements' was removed after links to tunnel and bell tower were added, so clearly you were offended by ther critisism on the 'swan bells'link .lame. so very very very lame. perhaps you were offended by the term 'achievements' as in reference to the bell tower this word may be inappropriate. i'm not gonna revert it yet but i think you should do it yourself. would you say it was NPOV to call the GST a 'john howard' acheivement? or would you also say that was ONLY a 'liberal' party achievement? i think you could safely call it a john howard act, (especially considering the treasurer has recently disowned it).

how come it never bothered you before the links were added? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scottmcdonald (talk • contribs)


 * Edits like this will be reverted because they seem to be there solely to make a point rather than inform the reader. An achievement section is OK but I felt that it was stretching it to say he was responible for the construction of the northbridge tunnel and the narrows bridge expansion - these projects were on the board for years, long before he came into office.  I'll give you the belltower one though - it's definitely worth mentioning. As a general principle though, I'm unsure about giving credit to an incumbent premier for capital works or ecomomic reforms that occur during his term - unless they truly are his own ideas and this can be verified.  Feel free to edit the article as it now stands rather than reverting to an old copy, as other information has ben added since.  Please though, remember to keep a neutral point of view. -- Ian &equiv; talk 05:29, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

What is now the "Graham Farmer Freeway" was certainly on the drawing board since the '60's or '70's, however apart from having some of it set aside as a road reserve (only in Burswood) nothing had been done. Also the section across Northbridge was not going to be a tunnel, but was going to be a grade road made by buying up and levelling the existing buildings and cutting through the streets of the area. Remember Northbridge was seen as old and delapitated back in the early '70's, and most planners didn't think much of flattening it. So the Tunnel was something that probably did surface in Court's time. Put it this way: Is the Mandurah Railway an achivement of the ALP Government of 2001-08? I mean it was mentioned as a "possible" by Carmen Lawrence just before the 1993 election (she didn't do anything more to bring it about) and Court did initiate work on it, via his "Kenwick Link" proposal which gave rise to the Thornlie spur. So that was something in the "pipeline for years", and the predecessor had even begun work on it. But in fairness, whatever else you may think of that government, the vast bulk of the work was initiated by them, and the present configuration was the product of their plans for the system. So by extension, the same must be true of both the Graham Farmer Freeway, the Narrows Bridge expansion (look at the article on this - the earlier proposals were much smaller in scale, and the plan was heavily criticised by Alanah MacTiernan) for Court, and certainly for the Northbridge Tunnel. The sinking of the Subiaco Railway is another achievement, and it did lead to some good development there, but I think that has a poisonous legacy, because it led to doing the same thing for part of the Northbridge line (it won't sink the line near the Horseshoe Bridge as it, and Perth Station, are listed!) is somehow a bigger priority than building the Ellenbrook Railway, or extending the line north. It wasn't a great government (although he doesn't look so bad compared to some of what's come since!) but it did do some things of substance, not just the much maligned Belltower. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.39.162.130 (talk) 16:51, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

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