Perth Voice Interactive

PERTH city council’s elected members and senior executives will receive thousands of dollars’ worth of free tickets after voting this week to spend ratepayers’ funds sponsoring WA Ballet for $55,000, the 40under40 awards for $20,000 and the WA music industry association festival for $40,000.

Lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi didn’t seem best pleased when Cr Reece Harley raised queries about some of the freebies, saying it would be sad if he or “mayors you know in neighbouring areas are going to be spooked by all the current need to talk about putting fear into those who might attend shows or accept invitations”.

Cr Harley said “I’m strongly supportive of the funding for WA ballet, they do a brilliant job,” but added he was “concerned” by a couple of things. He pointed out 54 tickets were to be reserved for elected members and 60 for the director and CEO to hand out. As part of the sponsorship deal council staff also get a 15 per cent discount on tickets.

“I just have a sense that it’s a bit over the top, it’s more than we’d usually have in an item like this and I think it’s unnecessary,” Cr Harley said.

He asked CEO Gary Stevenson if it was normal for council staff to receive discounts for sponsorship.

Mr Stevenson said it wasn’t strange and was really just a way for the ballet to market to get council staff to fill seats.

Ms Scaffidi used to sit on the WA Ballet board and told the meeting “I can tell you selling ballet tickets isn’t one of the easiest things in life. Fifteen per cent is a negligible discount — you’d get 25 per cent in any retail store”.

She said councillors should be getting out there and connecting with people to see what the city needs.

We asked Ms Scaffidi if she was referring to Vincent mayor John Carey in her comment about “mayors you know in neighbouring areas”, as he’d recently been pushing for more transparency in local government, especially around gifts and there’s been friction between them in the past. But she claimed it was only aimed at Cr Harley.

She told us, “as a councillor who regularly enjoys free attendance at many events while on council including access to any performance of choice at the concert hall and a wide variety of other events in the line of duty, it was strongly felt by all colleagues his comments seemed incongruous and that was my point in responding/speaking to him”.

“But I’m more curious to know why he has an issue with staff being able to purchase tickets? The discount is not extraordinary and is probably a discount any social group or interested group booking could possibly access.”

Cr Harley had earlier said he supported the ballet.

by DAVID BELL