THE entire electorate of Perth has been wiped off the National Broadband Network rollout map. The Coalition government says, hand on heart and hope to die, that it has nothing to do with Perth being a Labor seat. Suburbs that were to get connected, including Morley, have been dropped. Communications minister Malcolm Turnbull says Perth…

NEIGHBOURS who don’t like smashed bottles, yelling and drunks peeing on their property have thwarted a bid by Mt Hawthorn’s Pirate Bar to extend weeknight opening hours to midnight. Vincent council this week unanimously rejected the application, with mayor John Carey saying the small bar should never have been approved in the first place. Last…

DESPITE toiling in the hot sun all week Con Merkouris, 77, reckons he’s the happiest bloke in Perth. He’s restoring 300 metres of the old stone wall at the Greek Orthodox church on Charles Street, starting at “half-past-six in the morning and not stop for a second!”. Mr Merkouris recalls jobs were scarce when he…

RESIDENTS at St Elmo apartment block in Mount Hawthorn can already hear neighbours flush the loo through their walls. Now they’ll soon have the joys of noise from a small bar to add to the cacophany. The application still has to get the thumbs up from the strata, but this week a divided Vincent council…

KYILLA primary school’s Jasmine Prince has been raising money with her scouts group to help the turtles off Lombok. The 12-year-old’s only ever seen a turtle in an aquarium up till now, but soon she’ll join a trip to visit Bolong Turtle Sanctuary on the tiny island of Gili Meno to help the reptiles. “When…

FIVE months of hard yakka has transformed a rundown West Perth warehouse into a modern urban church. The Lord helps those who help themselves, so the congregation of Sonlife Church dug deep and ran fundraisers to pull together $200,000 to fully refit the dusty old space in the old industrial district. Contractors were brought in…

WHILE out on patrol in Leederville this week the Voice came across three-year-old Livia Elsa Pistani (right)intently testing out a tricycle from the Vincent bike library. The newly opened bike library was set up to let residents take bikes for the day or over the weekend to give them a spin (with a small fee…

AFTER a whirlwind trip around the nation Fitzgerald Street’s independent games developer SK Games is wrapping up its tour at home with an exhibition at Kurb Gallery. The quirky microbusiness develops unique arcade games designed for easy pub play with buddies, mounting them in ramshackle cabinets with a post-apocalyptic DIY aesthetic (milk crates loom large…

IF you’ve grabbed an early Voice and you’re a volunteer you may want to get down to Government House by 4.30pm. To celebrate International Volunteer Day a garden party is being held in the grounds of Government House, hosted by new guv Kerry Sanderson AO, who’s also the patron of Volunteering WA. It’s not all…

LUCKY the guinea pig has taken a bigger battering than John McClane in Die Hard. A cruel owner had abandoned the tiny cavy, suspending him from Shelley Bridge in a plastic bag and leaving him to suffocate and cook in the hot sun. He’d tried to claw his way out but fell from the bridge,…