Perth Voice Interactive

VINCENT council is looking at banning smoking in five town centre areas.

Boundaries drafted by the city will go out for public consultation, and then come back to council for the vote. If the new rules are approved, smoking would be punished by a $100 fine in:

• Leederville’s Oxford Street retail strip along with the southern park, and the village square and the nub of Newcastle Street;

• Beaufort Street from Walcott Street down to St Alban’s Ave;

• In Mount Hawthorn from the shopping strip at the northern end of Oxford Street, heading west along the Scarborough Beach Road shopfronts, and extending to encompass Braithwaite Park.

• In North Perth, on Fitzgerald Street from Chelmsford Road up to Angove Street, and then west along Angove to the Macedonian church.

• William Street from Bulwer to Newcastle Streets.

To give the smoke-free zones some teeth the council’s asking the state parliament to approve new local laws that’d attach a $100 fine to smoking in those zones.

Persistent smokers could be fined $200 if they refuse to butt-out when directed by an authorised person, such as a council ranger.

Five information sessions will be held at dusk in each town centre through to August; dates via imagine.vincent.wa.gov.au or call 9273 6000.

The ban proposal follows in the wake of Vincent council looking at ways to halt the spread of smoke shops in the city. 

By DAVID BELL

THE expansion of smoke shops may be curtailed under a new plan to ban any new smoking-devoted premises in Vincent. 

In recent years cigar bars, smokers terraces, “paraphernalia” shops, and private club smoking rooms have applied to open in Vincent with varying success.

Last month councillor Jonathan Hallett won unanimous support for his motion to investigate ways to halt the spread of smoke shops.

It’d ban any new “smoking/cigar rooms, tobacconists, and other outlets whose primary purpose of the premises is where tobacco and other products to be used for smoking are offered for sale or consumed”.

Cr Hallett, a public health researcher, says “tobacco is no ordinary commodity; The tobacco industry is insidious. 

“It is an industry that actively manufactures and promotes a product that kills two out of every three people that use it exactly as the manufacturer intends you to. 

Insidious

“It is a global industry mostly consolidated into just five companies and has manipulated and obfuscated the evidence of health impacts for 70 plus years. 

“It is an industry that has no social license and it is entirely appropriate for governments to minimise, exclude and marginalise the industry – not individual smokers, the industry – for the deaths it has already caused and will continue to do so as long as it is allowed to continue.

“It is an industry that targets children and adolescents. It is an industry that exploits low and middle income countries. It is an industry that has fought scientists and attacked governments through the courts for acting in the public interest including our own.”

He said if smoking was only recently introduced there was no way the products would be approved for sale, and “the legality of tobacco is a historical anomaly that has ensured millions of people around the world have lost their lives and continue to do so. 

“Anything we can do to ensure that this industry doesn’t recruit new consumers and minimise promotion that makes it harder for smokers to quit is imperative.”

The council asked the CEO to investigate how the ban could be done and will get a report back in the coming months, and will also write to the state health and planning ministers calling on them to take action to reduce the number of smoking outlets. 

by DAVID BELL

The most recent smoke-adjacent shop to open in Vincent was the tenth outlet of the rapidly growing UpInSmoke Empire, this one on Beaufort Street. 

They sell hookahs, waterpipes, safes, and precision digital scales branded with weedlords Cheech & Chong. 

They started operating before they got planning approval so had to pay a $885 fee to Vincent to retrospectively approve the unauthorised use.

A split council voted to let them stick around (Crs Hallett and Susan Gontaszewski opposing), but they’ll have to remove their noncompliant roller shutters and pull down some of the “excessive, repetitive and superfluous” signage. The council has a public health plan aiming to reduce the harms from smoking across the next four years. Council staff noted that while approving the shop 

“would be in contrast with the efforts of the state and the city to reduce public health impacts from smoking”, those initiatives did not translate into actual planning rules that prohibit the shop.

THE chance of a pool at the WACA is drying up with the long-awaited business plan warning Perth councillors of hefty costs ahead. 

Perth council CEO Michelle Reynolds recommends councillors don’t enter the costly four-way deal with WACA and the state and federal governments.

The independent business plan estimated the pool would run at a deficit starting at $1.3million a year, only getting worse across the life of the 40 year deal. That’s on top of the $31million initial outlay to build it. 

The plan also raised concerns about the draft design of the two outdoor pools, saying the most successful pools were indoors, integrated with other facilities like saunas, spas cafes and retail, and it noted the adjoining gyms are where the money is made. 

The gym at this site would be operated by WACA, who’d also collect the gym membership fees.

The pool was part of a “City Deal”, an infrastructure funding agreement between all three levels of government. 

The state and federal governments have urged the council to jump in and approve the pool saying it’s what an inner city with a growing population needs.

Rate holiday

But the new council – elected last October after a state government inquiry found the former council’s expenditure was getting out of hand – have taken to heart the inquiry’s warnings about prudent financial management and have demurred until the business plan was finished. 

The council is due to vote on the plan at its July 6 meeting. 

They’ll also consider another cost-saving measure there: Gradually removing the WACA’s longstanding rates exemption that’s worth about $180,000 a year.

From 2004 to 2013 the vast majority of the WACA’s rates bill was forgiven on the basis that the land was used “exclusively for charitable purposes”.

Perth council challenged that charitable status in 2013, so the WACA went to the state government and obtained a special ministerial decree saying they were rates exempt, a fiat that had to be renewed yearly.

Once Labor won state government in 2017 the ministerial rates exemptions ended, but the council kept on the kid gloves and still mostly waived the WACA’s bill given cricket was only played there a few days a year.

Now staff are recommending councillors phase out the generous rates arrangement.

Under the plan the WACA will get a concession of $183,000 off their $198,000 upcoming rates bill, and the waiver will be chopped down until they pay full rates by 2024/25 when the redevelopment turns the grounds into more of a commercial venture. 

by DAVID BELL

FEDERAL Perth Labor MP Patrick Gorman has called on deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce to step in and plug the pool funding gap with federal money if need be. 

Mr Joyce is now infrastructure minister overseeing the “City Deals” between federal, state and local governments.

But Perth council’s commitment was never set in stone. 

Last September, just weeks before the new council was elected, the state government-appointed commissioners held a private virtual meeting to confidentially discuss the pool plan.

There was no agenda published before or after, just a veiled item description that they were discussing “Major Infrastructure Projects”.

They voted to set aside 

$25million for the pool “subject to” the future council endorsing a business case and reaching an agreement with the WACA over who pays for what.

With the council still crunching the numbers and looking nervous over the hefty spend, Mr Gorman wrote to Mr Joyce: “The City Deal included a commitment to the East Perth pool as part of the WACA redevelopment. 

“The pool is now at risk of being cancelled due to a lack of consultation before the deal was announced. I urge you to consider funding the gaps of this project so it can start immediately.

“The City Deal process is federal government led. It was your government that promised my community of East Perth this facility…despite grand announcements and photo-ops I’m concerned about a lack of follow-up in the last nine months.”

Mr Gorman penned the letter on June 28, a day before the council was scheduled to vote, but the covid lockdown’s delayed the outcome a week. 

For years the North Perth building’s purpose was a baffling mystery (top), and now it’s gone (bottom). Images from Google Maps 2021

A LONGSTANDING North Perth oddity has disappeared with this week’s demolition of the strange Scarborough Beach Road/Loftus Street faux castle.

The corner castle’s purpose has been the subject of a lot of conjecture over the years but its prosaic origins are as the former Midland Brick display site. The land was sold for $4.95million late last year and will host the new Kidz Galore childcare centre, which is moving from nearby Haynes Reserve so Vincent council can turn that spot into a park.

Over the years there have been a few plans to put up shops and apartments on the site but none have come to fruition, and it’s just remained overgrown and graffiti-ridden.

The relocated Kidz Galore will be very close to another planned childcare, with a Nido Early School coming soon to the other side of the intersection to serve the famously fecund suburb. 

by DAVID BELL

GEL blaster enthusiasts marched from Elizabeth Quay to WA Police headquarters in East Perth last Sunday (June 27).

They were protesting the sudden ban of the toy guns that’ve seen a burgeoning sport pop up in recent years.

Gel blasters fire a low-velocity soft bead that’s mostly water, and the sport is similar to paintball. They’re mostly harmless except for potential eye injuries, so eye protection is worn during matches. 

But police are concerned by how realistic many of the guns appear, near-indistinguishable from real firearms at a distance. Last year tactical officers pounced on men playing with gel blasters in Ellenbrook, ordering them to the ground at (real) gunpoint and handcuffing them while they carries out inspections. Police say they received 147 calls about gel blaster incidents last year.

The toy’s legal status has been ambiguous: They were being sold locally and people met regularly to play. But last year some cautious hobbyists had emailed queries to police and were told gel blasters were currently considered a firearm and the matter was being reviewed by the legal services unit and the police minister. 

On June 14 the ban was formally announced. Police minister Paul Papalia said “someone in possession of a gel blaster in the community could be shot by police fearing they are carrying a real weapon. “Criminals are also attracted to using gel blasters as fake weapons or to convert to useable firearms.

“The WA Police Force has requested that we ban gel blasters so we are taking that action.”

The ban comes into effect July 3, and anyone in possession afterwards faces three years’ jail or a fine of $36,000.

Local gellers are furious.

WA Airsoft and Gel Ball Club chair Laurentiu Zamfirescu said in a release: “This decision has been taken without consultation of the WA gel ball community, without providing a regulatory impact assessment, without providing an amnesty period, [and] without providing any compensation to businesses and players.

“This leaves an active sports community of about 2000 players in shock as they’ve lost their hobby almost overnight and about 5-10 businesses forced to close down.”

Former upper house MP Aaron Stonehouse, a Liberal Democrat, had been working on a bill to legalise gel blasters and the similar airsoft toys, but he was defeated in the March election. 

by DAVID BELL

THERE could be a lot more downsizers in Mt Lawley after the launch of a new $39m luxury residential development in the suburb.

Situated on Field Street, the 24 residences and six townhomes blend the old and new, combining the heritage of the area with state-of-the-art facilities.

“With so few apartments of this quality in the area, No 7 Field Street is an ideal option for local downsizers seeking a luxury apartment in a neighbourhood they are familiar with,” says Willing Property managing director Tim Willing.

 “We have designed the residences in response to demand for a new apartment or townhome in Mt Lawley that doesn’t compromise on luxury, space, gardens, quality or amenity. 

“The 30 luxuriously appointed residences have been meticulously considered, planned and designed to appeal to a wide range of homeowners and lifestyle needs. 

“The apartments and townhomes are almost one-and-a half times bigger than other apartments on the market, with no two floorplans being the same.”

Set over 3000sqm and designed by Hillam architects in collaboration with award-winning heritage architects Griffiths Architects, the six green star building includes a heated outdoor pool, private gym, yoga studio and sauna. The residences are surrounded by a large private park featuring landscaped gardens and social spaces by the award-winning Tim Davies Landscaping.

Pricing for two-bedroom apartments start from $849,000; three bedrooms from $1.15m and four-bedroom penthouses at $2.75m. The street front three-level townhomes commence at $1.65m.

For more details visit http://www.fieldst.com.au

THREE short films about Vincent premiere at the Get Your Shorts On screening on Wednesday (July 7).

There is no Stopping Us tells the tale of our local radio station RTRFM that’s been broadcasting 24/7 for years, looking into what happens when the station goes into lockdown.

Pacing the Pool is the story of Richard Pace, who for the past 30 years has started his days with morning laps at Beatty Park.

We Had Mail is a celebration of Vincent letterboxes, from the humble to the grand, as they gradually become more disused. 

The three shorts are from a collaboration between Revelation Perth film festival and Vincent council to fund works by new filmmakers.

They screen alongside a solid lineup of other shorts, including a new work from Louise Bertoncini who made the hit Vincent film festival doco The Throwback, the story of a local video store and its beloved owner Melanie McIrnerney that went global and picked up international awards.

Bertoncini’s new short film Murder on the Dance Floor covers a 1925 incident when hundreds of people were dancing the foxtrot in the WA government house ballroom, when suddenly a gun went off.

Get Your Shorts On is at Luna Palace Leederville, book lunapalace.com.au or head to eventbrite for tickets to the encore screening on Saturday July 10 at The Backlot.