For the most part, the burgeoning 1980s nostalgia industry in Australia tends to overlook the fact that back then the states seemed to be engaged in a kind of Sheffield Shield of venality, competing to see which would prevail as the most politically debauched. One might have thought of the Queensland of Joh Bjelke-Petersen and Terry Lewis and the New South Wales of Abe Saffron and Roger Rogerson as topping the table, but Western Australia, like its cricket team of the period, was definitely no slouch.