Perth Voice Interactive

PERTH council has pushed back at a McGowan government call to help pay for a pool at the WACA.

Lord mayor Basil Zempilas said it was the government’s own Inquiry into the City of Perth that warned the council against reckless financial decisions.

The pool would go into the WACA as part of a state, federal and local government “City Deal” signed by all three parties, but it was the erstwhile commissioners appointed by the state government who gave Perth council’s consent and endorsed a $25m contribution.

The council, elected in October 2020, has been reluctant to dive in, despite premier Mark McGowan telling them to stick to the plan and state government assurances it won’t be a financial burden. 

At the February 23 council meeting Mr Zempilas said councillors “would welcome an aquatic facility within the City of Perth, and indeed in East Perth, but not at any cost.

“And right now we simply do not know enough and do not have all the facts to be able to make a properly informed decision.”

He said they need to make sure the design’s good and it’s financially prudent, and they’re concerned yearly running costs could be $1.4m.

“As yet the City of Perth has not prepared a business plan. This was not undertaken by the previous administration,” Mr Zempilas said. 

“A business plan is necessary to satisfy section 3.59b of the Local Government Act 1995.

Prudent

“We are regularly reminded, and remind ourselves, the recent Inquiry into the City of Perth, which the City of Perth is required to pay for, implored us to employ prudent financial management, transparency, accountability and good governance at all times and on all matters.

“The nine elected officials you see before you tonight take this responsibility very seriously; we heard the message and we are acting with the integrity expected and demanded of this office.”

The state reckons the centre won’t be a money sink like Beatty Park Leisure Centre which Vincent council is stuck paying for, as the attractions like slides tend to be money makers.

But Mr Zempilas said “we won’t be rushed into a decision which involves a $30m dollar capital outlay by the City of Perth, and based on the information we have before us at present, on-going running costs of $1.4m per year for 40 years.  

“All up, that’s an $86m commitment from the city – more than the combined commitment of the federal and state governments.”

The council’s main concerns about the design stem from it being a six lane pool tucked between a light tower and the last row of seats – “surrounded by concrete and with no shade” as Mr Zempilas pointed out. “It’s our job to explore the best design possible.”

The council’s not actually committed its $25m yet, but has it listed for future budgets. But they have spent $244,000 on a “due diligence” report to ensure the state government’s claims of profitability stack up, and may spend up to $295,000 more for detailed designs so they can get a more accurate idea of how much the pool will cost them.

by DAVID BELL

DOGS needing walks are being sought in the inner city suburbs. 

Pets of Older Persons is a not-for-profit whose volunteers help people who have trouble looking after their pets, so they don’t have to give up their animals due to poor health, disability or age.

Walking dogs for people who can’t easily get around is a big part of POOPs’ service but it’s been years since they’ve had anyone reach out for help.

Kym McDowell is a coordinator and volunteer dog walker and tells us: 

“I have been volunteering with POOPs since 2013 and used to walk a dog in Baldivis when I lived down that way. 

“Since I moved to West Perth near Beatty Park just over two years ago I haven’t been able to find a dog in my area to walk.

“Maybe it’s the demographics in Perth and Vincent but there is zero clients in this area and it has been that way for some time. We definitely have plenty of volunteers in this area though.”

Some volunteers in the Vincent and Perth areas drive out to reach pets in Morley, Innaloo or Menora, but Ms McDowell gets everywhere on foot or on a bike so is hoping some of our nearby readers have pooches in need of a stroll.

“I think I’m destined to gaze longingly at Hyde Park puppers until an elderly client discovers us and needs our support. Fingers crossed for a greyhound! They are my favourite.”

If you have a dog (or other pet) get in touch with POOPs via poopswa.org.au or on 1300 1100 92.

FORMER Perth councillor Jim Adamos has had fraud charges stemming from expense reimbursements dropped with “no explanation”. 

Shortly after the Inquiry into the City of Perth report was released, police alleged Mr Adamos set up “a sham lease at a property in East Perth” which enabled otherwise ineligible voters to cast a ballot.

He also faced charges of making “false claims for allowances between September 2015 and March 2017”.

Mr Adamos told the inquiry hearings he had claimed those expenses, but said “the council should have knocked it back” if his reimbursements were against the rules. The expenses included paying for his children’s clothes and family dry cleaning, and those relating to the charges totalled $630.

The sham lease charge, which was also levelled against his brother and sister-in-law, were dropped late December.

Prosecutors announced a decision to drop the fraud charges this week. 

“On the final day, the charges are dropped. No explanation whatsoever,” Mr Adamos told 6PR

“The only thing I can think of was perhaps there’s not enough evidence to prosecute it further.

“Perth police should have considered what evidence did they have before they actually charged me, before they approached my home in bulletproof vets ready to handcuff me… it’s been devastating, I’ve had a heart attack, I’ve lost jobs, I’ve lost friends, I spent eight days in a mental ward at Royal Perth Hospital, its impact has been extraordinarily significant.”

He said given the “$7.4 million” cost of the inquiry, “I think the City of Perth, the current council, should be saying ‘well we’ve spent that amount of money, we’re committed to pay that, but yet there’s been no smoking gun, nobody’s been charged, nothing’s occurred out of all of this’. I haven’t heard any more other than myself being charged, and those charges being dropped.”

His use of the council dining room and dining at city restaurants, which totalled a bill of $20,000, were criticised by the inquiry but weren’t part of the case. 

The council’s since tightened up its rules around reimbursement, requiring staff to reject any expense claims without required documentation. Even so, a mid-2020 internal audit found five out of 40 sample expense vouchers weren’t properly handled, either missing signatures or receipts, or not having been approved by the right manager.

by DAVID BELL

THE state’s first “Tools n Things Library” aims to cut down on waste from all the one-project wonders that end up gathering dust in the laundry cupboard.

The Mount Hawthorn-based not-for-profit has about 300 bits of gear up for weekly loan so far, from angle grinders and biscuit joiners to other rarely-used items like camping gear.

It came out of Transition Town Vincent’s Community Soup night in 2019, where locals gather for a bowl of soup and to hear about ideas that’d benefit the community, and Phil Brown’s tool library idea won the vote and their seed grant. 

John and Mary Charlton are two of the founding committee members who run the Saturday morning openings. They’re in education and don’t have a background in tools, but the community-building aspect appealed to them, along with “the whole idea of not wasting things, not duplicating,” Mr Charlton says. 

Along with tools they’re keen on any items that have a social element or would build community: “We would love to have more activities for homes,” Ms Charlton says, like sporting gear, 

“bocce games, wagons” to pull the kids round on.

So far they’ve populated the shelves through donations from men’s sheds in Karrinyup and Mosman Park, Mt Lawley Rotary, “Buy Nothing” Facebook pages, donations from local pollies Emma Cole and John Carey, and Bunnings chipped in for a loaded tool chest. 

When the items come in, one of their tool-savvy volunteers tests and tags anything with electrics in it, and then they can be entered into the online catalogue for booking at toolsnthingslibraryperthwa.myturn.com

Members can book it online then pick it up ready to go at the Saturday morning openings. 

The library’s been running in a soft-opening format for part of last year and in January the group got established in their new home alongside Floreat Athena football club in the old turnstile building at 41 Britannia Road.

There’ll be a formal launch on March 20 Noon to 2pm, keep an eye on their Facebook page.

PERTH councillors have been told they must keep copies of Facebook posts, Tweets and private WhatsApp messages about council business.

A new communications policy adopted by the city adheres to the previously-flouted State Records Act, and follows revelations during the Inquiry into the City of Perth of secret scheming amongst council factions leading up to the old lineup’s suspension in 2018.

Many former councillors used to discuss upcoming votes on third party messaging apps like WhatsApp, instead of their official emails which are automatically archived.

The Inquiry heavily criticised some of those decisions and the shadowy discussions leading up to them, such as the sacking of former CEO Gary Stevenson. 

The inquiry searched 95 phones, tablets and computers to build a picture of what went on behind the scenes, but most of the WhatsApp messages had already been deleted. 

They had access to just six months of messages from the WhatsApp “Team” group started by then-lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi. The “Team” included all councillors save Reece Harley and Jemma Green, and later James Limnios was removed after he fell out of favour.

During the inquiry hearings former councillor Judy McEvoy, a member of the “Team” Whatsapp group, confirmed she told other members to delete messages relating to their planned toppling of Mr Stevenson, who’d reported several councillors’ potential conduct breaches to higher authorities.

The Team had portrayed Mr Stevenson as ready to resign, so the whole council approved the termination of his contract not knowing he actually wanted to stay on.   

In a WhatsApp message to the team, Ms McEvoy referred to their sacking of Mr Stevenson as “an excellent execution”.

At first Ms McEvoy claimed the deletion was to save space, but later conceded deleting the messages would prevent the public finding out Mr Stevenson’s didn’t go willingly.

The inquiry only found the messages because one member did not delete them.

“I’m most embarrassed about it now,” Ms McEvoy told the inquiry.

Be nice edict

PERTH councillors will have to be nice when making public statements under their new communications policy.

For years councillors weren’t allowed to speak to the media at all and the lord mayor was the only public spokesperson. A push by former councillor Reece Harley, fed up with not being able to speak his mind when he disagreed with the direction the council was going, saw a policy change in 2017 to let them publicly state opinions.

They still weren’t allowed to bag out their colleagues, council employees, or council decisions, but were allowed to say why they’d voted against a policy. 

The new updates require councillors to be even nicer still: Public statements, whether as a councillor or in a personal capacity, must “maintain a respectful and positive tone”.

Previously they were prevented from using mean words about other councillors and city staff, but that’s been extended to everyone: They’re not allowed to “reflect adversely” on any “other person”. 

The new policy almost had a guidance line in it saying “it is respectful to the office of lord mayor to refrain from commenting publicly, particularly on recent decisions or contemporary issues, until such time as the lord mayor has had opportunity to speak on behalf of the City of Perth”.

That line was deleted on a recommendation from the council’s new policy committee, and the full council passed the be nice policy without dissent.

Fraud gap plugged

AFTER a year-long delay and five missed deadlines Perth council is now due to have a proper fraud and corruption control plan by March.

An external consultant’s report in August 2019 found the city’s fraud control was “highly undeveloped and non-existent in parts” and was considered a “medium” risk.

The Inquiry into the City of Perth report said a lack of a single coherent fraud control plan meant many staff didn’t understand fraud risks, there was confusion over who was responsible for eliminating risk, and even once identified, glaring loopholes would go unfixed for up to five years.

A control plan was meant to be done by January 2020, but the deadline was revised four times as council resources were tied up assisting the state government’s inquiry into misdeeds. 

Other overdue risk fixes include:

• An outdated management investment policy, covering how the city handles hundreds of millions in investments, originally meant to be updated five years ago, was finally fixed this week;

• The IT “disaster recovery plan” to recover their systems and data, another “medium” risk meant to be fixed by December 20 but delayed due to staff shortages and still under review;

• Fixing 65 cyber security issues (25 of them “strongly recommended” fixes by their auditor Microsoft), stemming from an August 2019 review but not due to be fixed until June 2021. 

INDI cinemas are facing a crisis when JobKeeper payments dry up next month, with predictions small players will be forced to close their doors.

Ingrid van den Berghe is managing director of Luna Palace Cinemas, which operates Luna on SX in Fremantle, and says despite WA’s relatively short shutdowns, the industry was doing it tough.

“It’s been a tough 10 months for us, and even tougher for a lot of our peers that are more reliant on the bigger product that comes from America, as none of the features are being released,” Ms van den Berghe said.

When they haven’t been closed down completely, Cinemas have been forced to operate with half-empty houses in order to comply with social distancing measures.

According to management consultants PwC Australia, Covid stripped around $750 million from box offices across the country during 2020, while cinema advertising plummeted by around 60 per cent. 

“I know that we as an industry are frightened about what’s going to happen come March,” Ms van den Berghe said.

JobKeeper

“When JobKeeper stops for everybody, and when the rent agreements come to an end, a lot of cinemas in Australia, and a lot of my peers are not going to be able to open their doors again.

“It would be terrible for the community, terrible for people that are going to lose their jobs, and also really bad for filmmakers.”

Ms van den Berghe met with federal Fremantle Labor MP Josh Wilson last week, urging him to lobby prime minister Scott Morrison over extending the Covid cash.

Mr Wilson said the federal government needed to be 

“sensible and responsible” in supporting all businesses at risk from the pandemic.

“Independent cinemas like our own Fremantle institution Luna on SX are a vital part of our cultural fabric, for telling our stories and connecting with the wider world,” Mr Wilson said.

“The Covid-19 pandemic has hammered these businesses and many will be dangerously vulnerable if JobKeeper support is ripped away at the end of March.”

Cinema Australia founder and WA Made Film Festival director Matt Eeles warned any impact on cinema diversity would flow-on to local filmmakers.

“Filmmakers make movies for the big screen,” Mr Eeles said.

“I’ve never met a filmmaker who has told me they’re putting their heart and soul into a film for it to be shown on a TV screen.

“Without these cinemas, some locally produced films would simply go unseen on the big screen, and that would be a massive blow for audiences and film buffs alike.

“Not only are these cinemas important as a screening hub for individual films, they’re also the home of many film festivals that showcase WA and Perth-made movies.

“During the height of the pandemic we saw a bunch of film festivals move to an online pay-per-view streaming platform and from all reports, virtual audience numbers didn’t come anywhere close 

to the number of people who would usually attend a physical screening.”

by STEVE GRANT

NORTHBRIDGE’S defunct Cinema Paradiso is set to become a live music venue, with a nightclub licence lodged for the triple-level “Club Paradiso”. 

It’s being set up Mario Madaffari, who took over the Paramount Nightclub across the road in 2018.

Cinema Paradiso was formerly a Luna Palace Cinemas operation until the large chain Palace Cinemas took it over in 2018.

Cinema Paradiso closed permanently in June last year, shortly after the Covid lockdown. Palace was silent over why, only saying it was time to close and bring its offerings “under one roof”, directing arthouse movie fans to its nearby Raine Square cinema.

Part of the Club Paradiso’s application for a liquor licence says a new music venue’s needed after some recent closures such as The Bakery and Ya Ya’s ceasing live music. 

Club Paradiso is planned to have multiple stages: Up and comers would perform in a casual front bar, there’s a theatre chamber for musos with bigger followings, and a main concert chamber for the biggest acts.

If the licence is granted and Club Paradiso goes ahead, the building will likely never be used as a movie theatre again: Part of the required works involve “infill of some spaces to remove the cascading floors that are used in cinemas”. 

The Piccadilly Theatre is also, slowly, being turned into a bar and music venue by Mellen Events. 

The plan harks back to 2016, but was delayed in 2017 when Perth council decided not to go ahead with a grant, a decision that was criticised as lacking transparency by the Inquiry into the City of Perth as it seemed to have come about because two competing business owners lobbied the council not to support it. 

The $665,575 heritage “adaptive reuse” rates concession was eventually approved later in 2017 and work started in 2018 but it’s yet to open.

By DAVID BELL

AN Aboriginal cultural centre in Perth has been pledged by the McGowan government as part of a $217 million suite of tourism funding. 

Premier Mark McGowan announced that if his government’s re-elected, $50m will go towards planning, design works and seed capital for an Aboriginal cultural centre.

THE National Trust WA received funding last year to run its first writer in residence program. The funding came from the Department of Culture and the Arts, which in 2019 produced a Writing Sector Review aimed at encouraging excellence in writing and foster professional development.

The trust chose four writers to kick off the program; Melinda Tognini and Ros Thomas who were based at Fremantle’s Samson House cottage and the Curtin family home in Cottesloe, and Sasha Wasley and Maddie Godfrey at Peninsula Farm in Maylands, while Sasha also spent some time at Woodbridge.

The Chook thought it might make a fascinating insight into the mind of a writer to see what piqued their interest in their historic home-away-from-home and how that might make its way into their writing, so we’ll be featuring one of the writers over the next few weeks.

This is our last instalment, where we check in with MELINDA TOGNINI, who ‘met’ some fascinating characters during her residency.

IN a year when so many writers I know struggled to write—myself included—it was truly a gift to be granted a National Trust Inspire Writing Residency with which to carve out time to create new work. 

The residency was for the equivalent of three weeks full-time, which I chose to undertake on a part-time basis: two days a week for six weeks at Samson House and three days at John Curtin’s home in Cottesloe. Even in a non-Covid year, it’s rare to have this concentrated time to dedicate to my writing, so I’m extremely grateful for the space to say yes to my creative practice and no to other demands and distractions.

I began the residency with the rather vague idea of exploring life on the home front during the Second World War, a fascination which began while researching my first book, Many Hearts One Voice: the story of the War Widows’ Guild in Western Australia (Fremantle Press, 2015).

I was particularly interested in finding a way to connect younger readers to this history. Yet I wanted to be open to the ways the archives might speak to me while I was at Samson House and the Curtin Family Home.

The archives certainly did speak, initially from the written and photographic material provided to me by the National Trust. 

In turn, this information sent me in the direction of Trove, the wonderful digital archive of Australian newspapers, as well as the State Library of Western Australia to track down several oral histories and the State Records Office’s Retromaps to see what land and buildings existed in previous generations. 

Through these (and other) sources, I ‘met’ Joy, a child living with her parents in the one-bedroom cottage on the grounds of Samson House; Amy, a Fremantle Prison escapee who shared her name with a famous pilot; Inez, a war bride planning to start a new life in the US; and Eddie, a teenage boy who dreamed of flying.  

Immerse

Being at Samson House and the Curtin family home enabled me to immerse myself in experiential research, not only within the buildings themselves but in the surrounding streets too. 

I regularly walked around Fremantle and Cottesloe for a sense of the proximity of places relevant to these young people and their stories. 

I wanted to know how long it took to walk from one location to another. For example, I realised that the flat Inez and her mother lived in was directly up the hill from the Ocean Beach Hotel, where US servicemen were enjoying their recreational leave. 

Perhaps this was how she met her husband-to-be. 

And Joy was living literally down the road from the prison Amy escaped from in 1943, although it’s unlikely they ever crossed paths in real life. 

The stories really are in their infancy. They’re in what I call a pre-draft stage — plenty of notes and mind maps, and a few sketched out scenes, but nothing that resembles a proper manuscript yet. 

I still have further research to do. 

There are more oral histories waiting for me in the State Library. 

There are court and prison records in the State Records Office to explore. 

I would like to have further conversations with those who were children and young adults in Perth and Fremantle during the Second World War. 

And I would especially love to chat to anyone who might remember or be related to Joy, Inez, Amy or Eddie. 

I had hoped that these stories would be non-fiction ones, and perhaps they still will be. 

At this stage though, there are too many questions left unanswered by the archives. 

Fragments

With so many gaps in the historical record, the details of these lives are currently mere fragments. They provide me with a framework, an outline, but not the whole story. 

For now at least, I will need to turn to my imagination to develop these characters, discover their connections to each other and build the story that is evolving.

However, I would never have uncovered these stories at all without the residency. 

I am sure that these stories are developing not only because of the National Trust locations themselves, but also due to the dedicated time to research and the opportunity to consistently turn up to the page.  

The National Trust Inspire Writing Residency has indeed been inspiring in so many ways, not the least of which is the opportunity to recalibrate my relationship with my writing. 

I finished the residency with a determination to continue the regular writing rhythm I established over two months.

It helped to farewell 2020 and head into the new year with Joy, Inez, Amy and Eddie for company. 

I am sure they will continue nagging at me until I have faithfully transcribed their stories onto the page.