PERTH councillors have agreed to plop $25 million into a pool at the WACA, as long as there are no maintenance bills.  The state government’s been badgering the city to pay for its portion of a pool as part of the joint local, state and federal City Deal.  But the cash has been long delayed…

PERTH needs a statue commemorating a significant woman to break up its conga line of stony-faced blokes, deputy lord mayor Sandy Anghie says. She’s put up a motion for council to invite submissions for statues commemorating significant women, drawing on a quote from Rebecca Solnit’s book The Monument Wars to explain the need. “A city…

LONG before most people had heard the term climate change, physicist and climate scientist Bill Hare was looking for solutions. A graduate of Murdoch University, Dr Hare worked on the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the 2015 Paris Agreement, and was a lead author of the landmark 2007 IPCC…

Perth’s feminine few BESSIE MABEL RISCHBIETH (1874-1967) co-founded the the Women’s Service Guilds of WA, a feminist organisation campaigning to improve rights for women and children.  Later she joined environmental causes, successfully campaigning against the plan to build a swimming pool in Kings Park, and unsuccessfully fighting the plan to fill in parts of the…

PERTH’s stern grey ghosts  have been told to go a bit easier on people running overtime on their parking tickets and spend less time targeting quiet residential streets.   In March councillor Brent Fleeton got up a motion calling for the council’s parking fine practices to be overhauled, stating “councillors heard loud and clear during…

THE Friends of Coolbinia Bushland are gearing up for another Djilba of restoring remnant bush, and are inviting folk along to get to know their rare urban woodland on Bradford Street. The group’s now marked a year tackling the exotic weeds that had been crowding out the native vegetation, having revived a dormant Friends group that…

A HUGE request for a $25 million ‘contribution’ to the WACA pool project has landed on Perth council’s door. It comes as the state government tries to get the current council to make good on its predecessors’ tentative agreement. Back in September 2020, just weeks before the current line-up was elected, the council was being…

AFTER years of disputes, frustrations and delays around Vincent council’s heritage and character area retention scheme, there’s finally some renovations coming to speed things up. The policy was intended to let people nominate their neighbourhood as a heritage area or character retention area, to ensure future development fitted the existing character. Owners of at least 40…

THE streamlined rules follow a fierce neighbourhood dispute around a patch of Mount Hawthorn being declared a character retention area. March’s council meeting was peppered with comments from those for and against. Those in favour wanted to keep the area’s interwar houses, those against said they shouldn’t be prevented from developing their properties by a minority…

MAYLANDS’ heavily congested railway crossing at Caledonian Avenue will be closed by the state government, but locals fear pedestrians and cyclists will face such lengthy detours they’ll drive instead. In 2017 Labor promised to close the crossing and upgrade surrounding crossings to ease traffic flow, as drivers were routinely waiting more than 10 minutes to cross.…