Perth Voice Interactive

CLEAN up your own mess and please stop throwing jellyfish at public art, Perth lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi is pleading.

The council is spending $380,000 on a third high-pressure cleaner, as two apparently aren’t enough to regularly service mucky streets.

Ms Scaffidi says individuals must take responsibility for the cleanliness too.

She recently spotted a couple of kids making a mess outside her home, near the boat sculpture on Claisebrook Cove.

“On Sunday afternoon I was about to have a nanna nap and I looked out of my window and there were these two nine-year-old boys smashing to pieces a great big jellyfish onto the little boat outside my house.

“Clean up your own mess”

“They didn’t know who I was, so I went out on the balcony and I said: ‘Do you live here?’”

The youngsters said “no”.

“Would you clean up the remains of that jellyfish?” Ms Scaffidi then asked, offering an old towel to the reluctant but obedient boys. “Do it in your own neighbourhood next time!”

“Just as well I did, because when I woke up later there was a whole family sitting on that boat that wouldn’t have been able to if I hadn’t forced those kids to clean up.

“You have to understand this story, because this is personal social responsibility, that is magnified over this city hundreds if not thousands of times where people are just doing what they want to do and not considering that other people need to use that space.”

She says the city can have all the best newfangled cleaning technology in the world, but it needs city visitors to get on board and clean up their act too.

by DAVID BELL