Perth Voice Interactive

THE CBD firm at the centre of a row over buskers in the Murray Street mall says it’s being unfairly painted as full of snobs and accuses Perth city council of shabby treatment.

Jenny Morrow manages finance and admin at software developer Calytryx Technology. She’d spearheaded a 50-person petition asking the council to push buskers 50m from their building at the corner of the mall and William Street, which also houses the Council of the Ageing, a physio and a computer consultancy.

Ms Morrow told the Voice they’re not against buskers, but the performers had become so loud and intrusive—especially those with amplifiers—that her staff had taken to wearing headphones all day and the company could no longer hold meetings with clients.

“And it usually is just three songs, because let’s face it, if they had more than that they’d be on the road”

She says a lot of thinking’s involved in software design so having the same songs murdered hour after hour, day after day, seriously affects creativity and productivity.

“And it usually is just three songs, because let’s face it, if they had more than that they’d be on the road,” Ms Morrow told the Voice.

Recently three buskers within earshot tried to outblast each other with their amps.

“Usually one of them wins out but can you imagine trying to work through that?”

Ms Morrow was so scathing of how the council had treated the complaints that she and her supporters boycotted Tuesday’s marketing, sponsorship and international relations committee where the petition was publicly raised (and flicked).

She says there was an extensive email exchange between the company, council staff and lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi, but promises it would be raised earlier weren’t met. Its sudden appearance on this week’s agenda came as a surprise.

The first she’d heard it was listed for a decision was when the media started calling, basically to have a go at the company for trying to kill off inner-city vibrancy.

“The policy says that buskers are there to enhance the vibrancy, vitality and ambience of the city—we get that, we don’t disagree, but all of the vibrancy comes from the other end of the mall.

“We’re just asking if we can have 50 metres at this end of the mall,” she says.

She says she’d even have been happy to negotiate a simple ban on amplification (Fremantle’s buskers policy doesn’t outlaw amps, but it frowns on them and noisy buskers can be told to turn down or clear off by rangers) but she’d formed a view the council has painted the group as busker-haters and won’t listen.

It could be the firm’s not in the council’s good books after hammering its complaints line over the past year. Ms Morrow says every day, every 30 minutes, someone rings up to dob in a busker who’s overstayed their 30-minute limit.

Company staff used to try to negotiate directly with the buskers, but some became aggressive so now they go straight to the council.

“Surely the rangers have better things to do than to come down every 30 minutes to move on a busker,” she says.

Rubbing salt into the wound, she says after their persistent complaints the council sent someone down to test how much noise the buskers were making: “He stood next to the busker and told him that he was going to monitor how loud he was, so could he just play normally.The busker just smiled,” she says, noting the dial on his amp suddenly wound its way back from 11 to about 3.

“We just laughed,” she said.

Ms Morrow says the buskers are also causing a public nuisance, as many of them block the entrance to the Perth underground parking.

by STEVE GRANT