Perth Voice Interactive

Drunk planning students could do a better job at drawing the new borders between Perth and Stirling says urban planner Matt Buckels.

“If you got a bunch of average first-year planning students and got them drunk and asked them to rearrange the Perth/Vincent border I doubt they would do as bad a job,” says the Vincent city councillor, who relayed his comments from his overseas holiday.

“Then again they’d still be better qualified and able than the political advisors and staffers who cobbled this hack job together.”

Cr Dudley Maier says when he’d heard Vincent was going to Stirling, “I thought it was the end of the world. You get less for murder.” When he saw the final map and, “realised I would be in the city of Perth I yelled out ‘yippee’. But I stopped and I thought why do I feel that way?

“Partly it’s about the size, I think Vincent being small is much better than Stirling.”

He says if someone phones up complaining about a broken footpath, technical services chief Rick Lotznicker knows instantly which street they’re talking about.

“In Stirling they’d say ‘which suburb is that in?’ They wouldn’t have a clue.”

“It’s ridiculous,” mayor Alannah MacTiernan said shortly after walking out of the Cockburn meeting with WA local government minister Tony Simpson.

“We support the idea of local government reform, [but] we’re an inner-city community, just put us back in with the City of Perth.
“The arguments that are being used, that you can’t have suburbs in the city, is just ridiculous.
“When you look at very successful councils the City of Melbourne has 11 suburbs attached to it.

“Our suburbs are inner-city and will complement the CBD.”

Most councillors said they’d prefer to keep Vincent as is but conceded that argument was lost with the premier.

CEO John Giorgi—the only CEO Vincent has had—said, “this is a sad day for Vincent, this is a sad day for local government”. The merger between Bassendean and Bayswater was, “a marriage doomed to fail… they’re cat and dog,” he said.

Ms MacTiernan condemned the premier for breaking a firm pre-election promise not to force council mergers. Councils were told if they didn’t volunteer they’d be overridden and the government is even moving to rub out a clause in legislation that allows locals to oppose mergers with a referendum.

Perth Liberal MP Eleni Evangel is on holiday but sent a staffer to the packed Vincent meeting to say she would “fight for a united inner-city Vincent”.

by DAVID BELL