Perth Voice Interactive

STIRLING council has quietly stuck the knife into locally-owned legacy media and will instead line the pockets of billionaire US technocrats like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg when advertising development applications.

Tucked away in an attachment to this week’s council agenda – which sailed through without a single debate on any item – council staff had altered the City’s planning policy on community consultation to remove a requirement that affected ratepayers are alerted to development applications through an ad in a local newspaper.

Instead, the City has left itself the cheaper option of advertising on one of its social media platforms, primarily owned by US companies such as Zuckerberg’s Meta (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger) or Musk’s X (formerly Twitter).

Community groups, who’d also been on the list of those to be notified of developments big or small, were similarly expunged and ratepayers not welded to their social media will now have to rely on their ward councillors to keep them up-to-date.

Other changes to the policy include removing a requirement that developers reimburse the City for any expenses it occurs advertising complex applications, and doing away with re-advertising applications when minor changes have been made.

The changes to the policy were sparked by a request from councillor Elizabeth Re in 2024 to have tables added to committee agendas showing how close respondents to consultation lived to the development and whether they were even Stirling residents.

“A table would make it easier for both the councillors and the public to ascertain the views of the community after a consultation process on a topic and would show how the issue is considered by those in close proximity to the site and those not located in the City of Stirling,” Cr Re had written about her motion.

Overhaul

Staff then took the opportunity to overhaul the whole document, bringing it in line with other updated policies and regulations, as well as “waiving the requirement for public consultation in certain circumstances, and several administrative improvements”.

“A key feature of the Community Engagement Policy is the requirement for business units to develop consultation procedures for decision-making, communication, and feedback,” a report to the council noted.

“At a minimum, these procedures will include consultation requirements, impacted consultation radius,

how submissions are to be considered and reporting formats for feedback on decisions.”

The amended policy was advertised and received just two submissions, both favouring the policy and one suggesting QR codes on signs and letters directing people to the appropriate page on the City’s website, which got the nod from staff.

Disclaimer and Editor’s comment: While the Voice hasn’t benefited from these style of adverts in the past, it’s clear that as a locally-owned and independent newsroom we’ve got skin in the game; and we’re not the only ones. Local newsrooms such as the SevenWest-owned PerthNow Stirling, WAMN News, WA Today and The West itself are all affected by this chipping away at our revenue base – all while the federal government wrings its hands over Australia’s declining media diversity. It’s convened inquiries, propped up regional newsrooms with taxpayer-funded bailouts, and brawled with Zuckerberg to try and show it’s doing something to protect journalism, but the answer is simple: Supporting local, independent newsrooms through advertising is a better long-term solution than quick-fix bailouts. All spheres of government should also consider whether the social media sites they’ve been fuelling with millions upon millions of taxpayer funds have earned the social capital to deserve that largesse. 

Steve Grant, Editor

by STEVE GRANT