ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE is being embraced at Stirling council, with councillors and staff allowed to “leverage AI for tedious tasks” so they can “focus on impactful customer-centric activities”. This week the council passed a “Generative AI policy”, referring to the programs that can generate humanesque responses to questions. With approval from the CEO, councillors will be…

WHEN we asked Bing’s artificially intelligent chat if other local governments had an AI policy, the chatbot was quick to spruik AI’s value, claiming “the City of Pasco in Washington State has implemented a generative AI tool to analyze data on transportation, energy consumption, demographics, and environmental factors to optimize urban planning”. We couldn’t find…

EDITH COWAN University has been ranked sixth in a new national breakdown of higher education’s top performers — the only WA uni to make the top 10.  The ranking system, established by the Australian Financial Review, puts more emphasis on areas such as student satisfaction and equity which are often relegated to the bottom of…

PERTH MP John Carey has been given a reminder about parliamentary conduct after referring to the Nationals MP for the South West as Louise ‘Kill the Whales’ Kingston. Mr Carey was speaking about the Cook government’s new policy on airbnb-style short-term rentals, which aims to free up housing for the longer-term rental market. It involves…

THE long and dusty saga of Claisebrook’s concrete plants has an end in sight with an intricate land swap plan in the works. The Cook government plans to shift the plants out of the neighbourhood, but residents are dead against any deal that’d extend their approval to operate beyond the current June 30, 2024 expiry.…

A DRUG crisis centre has been approved for a residential street in Vincent after local councillors were outvoted by state-appointed panel members.  The state government wants to set up an “immediate drug assistance coordination centre” in an empty building at 37-43 Stuart Street Perth, to be operated by not-for-profit Cyrenian House (“Drug help centre has…

TRACKLESS trams such as the one which made its way along Scarborough Beach Road for the first time last week, should be part of the Future of Fremantle discussions says Peter Newman. The Fremantle resident and professor of sustainability at Curtin University did much of the research leading up to Integrated Transport Solutions Group’s purchase…

PRIDEFEST returned to Hyde Park for the 2023 Fairday, with thousands descending on the park on November 12. The official count’s not in yet, but the daytime family-friendly Fairday’s been growing in popularity compared to the evening Pride Parade in recent years, with 37,000 people attending the 2022 Fairday compared to the 30,500 at the…

AN 11th-hour Cook government offer to fund Perth council’s “Safe Night Space” women’s shelter has been deemed too late to stop the closure, with lord mayor Basil Zempilas saying the building will be “returned to community use”. In 2021 Perth council opened the SNS in the old Rod Evans Centre on Hay Street in East…

AFTER a lengthy tender process Vincent’s e-scooter hire scheme rolled out this week, allowing cross-border riding with neighbouring Perth council. Vincent has picked Neuron Mobility to provide 250 rental e-scooters for a 12-month trial, hireable via an app and charging $1 to unlock the scooter then about 50 cents a minute to ride. Perth council…