RENTERS’ rights in WA remain flimsy despite home ownership increasingly out of reach. Many tenants are reluctant to complain about glaring maintenance issues worried rents will be hiked up or they’ll be given a bad reference. With the WA Residential Tenancy Act up for review this year, WA Greens housing spokesperson Tim Clifford recently held…

OFTEN eaten by cats and foxes and forced out of their habitat by urbanisation, a population of quendas still manages to survive in Lightning Swamp in Noranda. Bayswater council is currently in the midst of a four week study of the little marsupial to ensure the population’s health. Nocturnal and solitary critters who like to…

COUNTRY folk are well acquainted with states of emergency, but with 200,000 people in the city on an average day the City of Perth is focusing on emergency planning in the big smoke. Last year the council compiled an emergency management strategic plan to coordinate a response in the case of a disaster–natural or man-made.…

TAKING a break from the pressures of exams and assignments, 45 teens came down to Morley Library to de-stress with the combination of cats and yoga, with a litter of kitties on loan from Cat Haven.

A PERTH pensioner says she’s being forced out of her home because of a neighbour’s chronic smoking, and authorities seem powerless to help. Kath* is a former nurse who worked in the cancer wards of St John of God hospitals, a breast cancer survivor and the wife of a motor neurone disease sufferer. But she…

AT least four Perth city councillors are seeking tens of thousands of dollars to cover legal fees stemming from the local government inquiry into the city. Under council policy they can be reimbursed up to $10,000 per instance if they have legal costs relating to their position. The three state government-appointed commissioners currently filling in…

NINTY police officers will be transferred to the new Perth police district in a bid to curb anti-social behaviour in Northbridge. Fifty of the new officers will be on the beat. WA Police Minister Michelle Roberts said the move follows “consistent concerns” over violent incidents within the city and the entertainment precinct. “People will see…

BAYSWATER’S bike boulevard looks set to be extended to Morley city centre, but over half the residents living beside the proposed extension are against it. The million dollar first stage of the boulevard, running for 2.7km along Leake and May Streets, was completed in September. Stage two will run from Adelphi St to Russell St…

WITH marriage equality now the law of the land and couples able to marry regardless of sex, Vincent council has discontinued its relationship declaration register. Perth MP John Carey proposed the idea when he was a Vincent councillor in 2012, saying that if the federal government wasn’t going to get on with legalising marriage equality…

A DAY care centre for the elderly could be turned into townhouses as Bayswater pulls the plug on its Home and Community Care Program. Since 2004, Olive Tree House in Morley has been providing in-home food services, social activities, and transport and domestic assistance to the elderly. The facility hosts cooking classes and workshops, and…