Perth Voice Interactive

WITH a flood of Aboriginal activists and supporters fronting Council House to look for confiscated belongings, Perth city council has agreed to hold open days to let people reclaim impounded items.

Five truckloads of camping goods and other items were taken from Matagarup/Heirisson Island during the PCC’s attempt to “decamp” people from the island last year.

The law states the council can only hold items for seven days: it’s had them for months. Now it’s agreed to let people inspect goods themselves as a step in retrieval.

Activists are doubtful they’ll get their belongings back intact. The first to inspect her goods, Diane Niyati, couldn’t even find her belongings amidst the storage, which resembled a rubbish dump.

Following court mediation the PCC paid her $966.70 in compensation, which has sparked more claims from folk whose goods were taken and not returned (“PCC ordered to pay,” Voice, February 12, 2016). 

We asked the PCC what its plan was to deal with other cases where goods were missing or destroyed, and whether it’d force everyone to go through the court process individually for compensation.

But under the stewardship of senior communications officer Michael Holland, the PCC has simply stopped responding to any inquiry that has even a tinge of controversy about it.

Our inquiry was lodged Monday but went unacknowledged. Mr Holland—formerly a journalist before ditching the craft to take up PR—was happy however to send us several emails about how great the city’s new library is.

Inspection dates for confiscated goods are March 16, 17 and 18, and if the goods aren’t intact more court action is expected to follow.  “We’re going to go in in a group, as much numbers as we can, to go and see our personal belongings,” activist Bella Bropho says. “We want to see the ‘A1’ conditions that [former CEO] Gary Stephenson told us about, and see that they’re in good nick.”

by DAVID BELL