Perth Voice Interactive

Vincent locals will march at 2pm today, Saturday August 10, to protest their community being split down the middle by premier Colin Barnett.

Mt Lawley couple Gabrielle Mews and Trevor Cross have lived on Chelmsford Road for 15 years and are in the part of Vincent being shipped off to Stirling.

Since hearing the news they’ve boarded the campaign to instead merge all of Vincent with Perth, and have knocked on a hundred-odd doors and handed out countless fliers.

Ms Mews says they were “devastated” to learn of the split.

“We were surprised and disappointed,” Mr Cross says. “And so were all our neighbours. There’s a very strong feeling of being let down.

“We’re certainly not against amalgamation, I’ve always said it had to happen in Perth,” Mr Cross says, adding that where he’s seen country shires amalgamate it’s worked well.

But he thinks all of Vincent should go in with Perth to preserve the community feeling.

“We’ll lose the community,” the part-time mining consultant and collector of whale-bone carvings says. “Eventually you’ll drift apart.

“We’re going to be the bottom end of Stirling, and Stirling doesn’t have the experience of running an inner-city suburb.

“Unfortunately we’d be such a small section of a big council area that we’re not going to get the same service.”

Vincent mayor Alannah MacTiernan this week wrote to the premier to tell him Vincent formally opposes the split, and instead wants to be taken in entirely by the enlarged capital.

“Mr Barnett has totally misunderstood the nature of these inner-city communities, and that sense of identity and belonging that has developed.”

She says the campaigners have “logic and passion on our side”.

Ms MacTiernan says this plan was sprung on the council at the last minute and wasn’t a part of last year’s Robson report nor community consultation, giving them little time to comment on it.

The rally starts at the Angove Street strip. So far 100 people have joined the Facebook event, but Mr Cross says they’ve spoken to many more outside the social-media set who are also interested.

“We’ve spoken to 90-year-old ladies that are going,” he says.

Stirling mayor David Boothman is confident his council can provide “more services and lower rates” and says customer satisfaction surveys show Stirling’s at the higher end of the scale.

by DAVID BELL