“Westralia shall be free” – or so Western Australia voted in a referendum in 1933. Despite 66% of the population being in favour of becoming an independent nation, the dream of secession was ultimately quelled by constitutional questions and the onset of the second world war.
Almost a century later, supporters of the independence movement remain in far smaller numbers, yet bolstered, according to the authors of a new book, by the “collateral harms” of Canberra’s Covid-19 response, the under-taxing of WA’s natural resources sector and rising costs of living.
