Perth Voice Interactive

Delicious dummy spit
WHAT a delicious quote within your article last week “Morley off the map for NBN” (Voice, December 6, 2014) where your favourite media go-to line-grab girl is having yet another bleat.
In it, the Labor member falsely “reckons the new schedule favours Liberal seats”. Dummy spit or what? It must get terribly lonely and frustrating sitting there twiddling her thumbs on the Opposition’s cold backbench in Canberra with absolutely no influence whatsoever at the government decision-making table. Voters within the federal seat of Perth deserved so much better.
If she truly believes her own falsehoods, then I look forward to her support at the next election turning the federal seat Liberal, where the people of Perth can finally join the winning federal team, and finally have proper representation at the decision-making table, rather than simply mindlessly protesting outside.
I’ll even save her a blue campaign T-shirt.
Darryl Moore
Federal Liberal Candidate for Perth 2013
Beaufort St, Bedford 

It’s about equity
I REFER to the letter by Enzo Sirna AM (“Wiped out overnight,” Voice Mail, December 6, 2014) and note that in the past, the Italo-Australian Welfare & Cultural Centre has been the largest recipient of the WA community languages program funding. With 29 community organisations providing courses across 18 languages, this is clearly inequitable.
This year, Erebus International undertook an external review of WA’s community languages program and identified unmet needs for the provision of programs across a wide range of languages. It also noted the significant imbalance in the distribution of funds and that the current program delivery structure and administration does not reflect best practice.
Given these issues, my aim is to restructure the program to one that will enable more equitable access to a community languages program for all language students and one that complements languages curriculum available within the formal school systems.
First, we are restructuring the program to principally support after-hours classes. This will be achieved through a two-staged reduction of funding to the Italian insertion classes currently delivered through government public schools and Catholic schools.
Then in 2015, funding will be reapportioned to 29 community languages schools currently being funded for the delivery of community languages tuition; and consideration will also be given to those community language schools operating without funding and those wishing to establish a community language school.
The office of multicultural interests has been meeting with stakeholders this week to brief them on the changes, which will include an increase in per capita grant funding from $65 to $100 per student during 2015 as we transition to the commencement of the new funding model in January 2016.
The community languages program is of enormous value to our diverse community. I encourage everyone to support the more equitable funding changes that are being made as they will provide value for money and help to meet future community language needs.
Dr Mike Nahan MLA
Minister for Citizenship and
Multicultural Interests

Inappropriate
YET again I see that the Perth Voice refers to the “powerful but unelected” WA state administrative tribunal (December 6, 2014).
There is a good reason why the members of the SAT are not elected: the SAT is a court, just like any other part of the court system, and its members must have legal or other suitable qualifications.
The tribunal reviews decisions made by government agencies and has original jurisdiction in various matters. Appeals lie to the Court of Appeal or the Supreme Court. One would not refer to “the powerful but unelected Supreme Court of Western Australia”: referring to SAT in these terms is just as inappropriate.
Peter Handford
Winthrop
Professor, Law School UWA
The Ed says: Thanks for that, Prof, but for as long as the SAT continues to override the decisions of elected bodies, we’ll continue to point out it is not elected. The SAT doesn’t simply adjudicate whether planning decisions are lawful, it enjoys wide discretionary power and often—too often in our opinion—overrides perfectly lawful decisions made by elected councils simply because its member (or members) has another preference.

Garbage
I THINK that letter you published from the jerk who wants to shut down the soup kichen on Beaufort street has to be one of the most offensive things I’ve read in the many many years I’ve lived in Northbridge.
What right do people like that have to move into my town and try to shut down support services for people, some of whom have been living in Northbridge for decades?
The old guy next door to me has been living around Northbridge for decades and he’s very much dependent on the soup kitchen because his medical costs mean theres not much left of his pension for food after his rent.
Combined with vilifying mentally ill folks and poorly veiled racism at our indigenous brothers, the author hit a hole-in-one in offensive garbage. If anyone needs to get out of my suburb, it’s the yuppie gentrifiers pushing rents up and trying to shut down the diversity of our multicultural working class inner-city suburb.
Shayne G O’Neill
Northbridge