PERTH city councillor Reece Harley has been cleared of breaching council rules for printing and distributing 3400 newsletters to residents 14 months ago. There’s no hard rule on the use of copy machines and mailouts (and councillors occasionally use them to send out Christmas cards or Chinese New Year’s greetings), but then-CEO Gary Stevenson reckoned…

GREENS leader Richard Di Natale outlined a grassroots approach to the coming federal election to a packed Perth Town Hall last week. About 250 people filled the hall to hear Senator Di Natale outline how his party was going to approach the July 2 double dissolution. He said the two major parties were ignoring many…

MEDICATION is reportedly amongst items confiscated by Perth city council in its raids on Heirisson Island/Matagarup. The council’s been seizing goods to stop people camping there, and the Voice has heard one woman had her monthly prescription taken, along with the rest of her belongings. The council’s charging people the cost of seizure and storage…

THE North Perth primary school olive harvest has become a treasured annual tradition and the kids will be back out on April 23 and 24 picking fruit from local neighbourhood trees to make olive oil for their P&C fundraiser. Last year 1.34 tonne of fruit was squeezed to create 700 bottles of oil. Ingrid Magtengaard…

PERTH city councillor Lily Chen has been endorsed by the Liberal party to contest Mirrabooka at next year’s state election. Labor’s Janine Freeman holds the seat with a 4.6 per cent margin. Announcing her candidacy on Facebook, Ms Chen says, “it is a very marginal seat but I love challenges”. “I treasure the opportunity the…

IN a sign of how deeply the end of WA’s mining boom is being felt, inner-city Perth suffered a 1.7 per cent rise in unemployment over the past year. According to the federal employment department, Perth city started the year with a 5.8 per cent unemployment rate, close to the national average, but by January…

A BIZARRE sight has been greeting dog walkers down at Woodville Reserve in recent weeks, with two women carrying a portable fence while escorting people through the park. It’s an art project in response to a story the Voice ran (“Pooch and shove,” January 14, 2016) about a bit of biffo down at the reserve.…

CITIZEN scientists are needed to help collect bird feathers in wetlands so regular scientists can build a “feather map” and figure out where birds are and how they’re coping with reduced river flows, flooding, drought, climate change and different land uses. Waterbird expert Kate Brandis is heading up the project and says Perth’s great lakes…

FOR more than two months Ditte Eden’s family has been producing just one bag of rubbish a week. The Mt Lawley family had been reducing its rubbish output for a while but recently, when Ms Eden’s partner, Merlin, prepared to take the Sulo out he found it was empty. That week’s waste was just a…

THE humble Carmel Gym in Yokine was home to the Australian National Para Table Tennis Championships this week.  The Maccabi table tennis club hosted competitors with disabilities from Australia, Fiji, New Caledonia and New Zealand, as well as Thai medalist Rungroi Thainiyom who won gold at London in 2012. There were wheelchair divisions, standing, deaf…