Perth Voice Interactive

AFTER 10 mature trees were cut down for a state government housing project in Mount Lawley, Vincent mayor Alison Xamon is furious at the way locals and councillors were left out of the loop by the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage.

The block at the corner of East Parade and Guildford Road is being cleared of 10 of its 35 trees to make way for state housing (“Residents lament lost trees,” Voice, October 19, 2024).

An initial arborists’ report provided to Vincent council in June said that there were no major issues that would require tree removal.

Ms Xamon is particularly concerned about a phantom “second arborist’s report”. She says the DPLH told residents and media that an alleged “second arborist’s report” that supposedly justified the tree removal had been provided to Vincent council. 

But the first report saying the trees were fine was “to this date, the only arborist’s report that has ever been received by the City of Vincent,” Ms Xamon said at the October 22 council meeting.

“Not only is it devastating that these large trees have been removed, but the way in which they were removed and the way in which everybody was treated with such contempt, is absolutely unacceptable,” Ms Xamon said.

Ms Xamon said she supported the housing project and it was a good site for it, but said the state should’ve still heard out the council and consulted with locals to find a way to design that’d retain the trees.

Contempt

“I’m extremely disappointed that DPLH effectively decided to ignore that opportunity to work with Vincent to see if they could come up with a really excellent design for that site.

“Instead we were told that the trees needed to be removed because of underlying issues around asbestos. 

“Now, I have no doubt that there was asbestos on the site. We have asbestos right throughout the City of Vincent… we are an old area and that means that there are a lot of these sites that require remediation of asbestos. 

“But what we also know is that there are ways to actually engage in asbestos removal around existing trees; it is not the case that you automatically have to remove them.

“We kept getting told that there was a second arborist’s report that made it clear that the trees had to be removed because of this asbestos, and what I’m extremely disappointed about is that the head of DPLH also told members of the community that that second arborist’s report had been received by the City of Vincent when I’d been making it very clear that no such report had been received… we were not aware, we had not seen the evidence that these trees needed to be removed because of the asbestos.”

We contacted the DPLH to ask about their role in the rumour of a second arborist’s report (and also asked to see any such report if it existed) but did not hear back before deadline.

Ms Xamon closed her public address saying: “I hope that we’re not ever going to see a sort of repeat of the contempt that we were subject to in the last week.”

by DAVID BELL