Perth Voice Interactive

FEDERAL Labor MP Alannah MacTiernan has condemned Perth lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi for dismissing the concerns of heritage supporters (Voice, February 1, 2014).

At last week’s Perth city council meeting Ms Scaffidi told people fighting to save the Michelides tobacco factory that if they wanted a say on the building’s future they should buy it. The PCC then voted to allow its demolition.

Ms MacTiernan says the comments don’t “augur well” for the capital’s heritage buildings under Ms Scaffidi’s leadership.

“It’s a strange concept, going in the wrong direction,” the former WA planning minister says.

Ms MacTiernan says there would be no need for a WA heritage act if the only people able to have a say were property owners.

She says the Act—introduced in 1991 under a former WA state Labor government—helped stem the destruction of Perth’s heritage stock. In the 1960s and ‘70s—when the only people able to save heritage buildings were owners—vast swathes were flattened.

In 1992 Ms Scaffidi’s husband Joe illegally demolished the facade of the Old Railway Hotel, defying a Perth city council conservation order on the property. He was one of the first people to be prosecuted under the WA heritage act and was fined $10,000 and ordered to reinstate the facade.

The lord mayor says her comments at last week’s meeting have been taken out of context.

She says they were aimed not at concerned individuals but at groups like the WA Art Deco Society and the Museum of Perth lobby led by Dallas Robertson, “who show sudden and even eleventh hour interest in such matters, but little else than that in regards to heritage preservation”.

“If they are serious their earlier interventions would be better served,” Ms Scaffidi says, adding she stands by the council’s decision to permit demolition of the 90-year-old property.

The WA heritage council last year recommended heritage listing the whole site, and PCC staff had agreed but, following owner Graham Hardie’s presentation to a committee, the council voted to reject heritage listing. That prompted WA heritage minister Albert Jacobs to ignore the heritage council’s recommendation.

Ms MacTiernan doesn’t want the whole building saved, but reckons Perth’s already diminished pool of art deco buildings should be protected, by keeping the factory facade.

Retaining a mix of old and new buildings makes for a more exciting city

“This is one of those cases where it’s not hard, because it’s not going to impede development of that site.”

The fiery former planning minister is in fact a heritage property owner putting her “money where her mouth is”: She purchased an old building in Maylands in order to open a small bar and supported its heritage listing, “even though it limited what I can do”.

Retaining a mix of old and new buildings makes for a more exciting city, Ms MacTiernan says: “If you want a world-class city you can’t just have a development monoculture…a world-class city has depth and a measure of unpredictability.”

As planning minister she’d insisted the East Perth Redevelopment Authority retain old buildings.

“We walked street by street and I said ‘don’t take them down because they are really interesting buildings that add an element of excitement’.”

But Ms Scaffidi is quick to point out that during Ms MacTiernan’s time as planning minister the Labor government tried to resume the Michelides factory for a new police complex.

“There was no discussion then of any intended retention of the facade,” she notes.

The complex was eventually built at the corner of Fitzgerald and Roe Streets.

by JENNY D’ANGER