Perth Voice Interactive

STIRLING councillor Elizabeth Re has won her appeal against a Local Government Standards Panel finding that she breached the local government code of conduct by posting controversial images on Facebook. 

Last year Cr Re reposted a series of images to her personal Facebook page, including one of a British soldier featuring the line “we owe illegals nothing and our veterans everything”. 

Another contentious post featured all-capital text stating “You came from there because you didn’t like it there, and now you want to change here to be like there. You are welcome here, only don’t try to make here like there. If you want to make here like there you shouldn’t have left there in the first place.”

Cr Re’s repostings were criticised by racial equality advocate Suresh Rajan who said: “The page from which she shares these posts is Speak up Britain. It is a notoriously racist page.”

At the time Stirling mayor Mark Irwin said the posts had “racist undertones” and “inferred that migrants aren’t welcome”.

He was quoted in other media saying: “Cr Re’s comments do not align with City values. 

“On behalf of the city I strongly object to this message and have written to Cr Re to request that she reconsiders and apologises and/or remove these posts while the city follows any due process.”

Standards

Cr Re was referred to the Local Government Standards Panel, and in February the LGSP initially found she had contravened Clause 18 of the rules of conduct adopted by Stirling council, specifically a clause stating that a council member must not make improper use of their office to cause detriment to the local government or any other person.

A sanction was imposed requiring her to make a public apology, but Cr Re appealed the decision to the State Administrative Tribunal, and on October 30 the LGSP finding was overturned. 

Cr Re’s media release from her lawyer states: “Cr Re applied to the State Administrative Tribunal to review those findings by the LGSP, and the attorney-general of Western Australia then intervened in the proceedings before the tribunal.”

According to a spokesperson from the attorney-general’s office, the A-G intervenes in all cases involving the LGSP, which cannot contest SAT reviews challenging its decisions in order to maintain impartiality.

Cr Re’s media release goes on to say: “On reviewing the posts, the attorney-general, through the State Solicitor’s Office, accepted that the posts did not provide any basis for a finding that Cr Re intended to denigrate or disparage migrants in any way, or to cause any other form of detriment to migrants. For these reasons, the attorney-general requested that the tribunal set aside the findings that had been made by the LGSP, which the tribunal has now done.”

The response from the A-G’s office confirms the pivotal points: “In this case, the evidence did not demonstrate an intention by Cr Re to cause detriment to the City or any other specific person, and accordingly lawyers for the attorneys-general submitted that the decision of the panel should be set aside.”

While the test for Clause 18 wasn’t met, the response from the A-G’s office does note that “in the proceedings, lawyers for the attorney-general contended that Cr Re’s conduct, in sending the Facebook posts, contravened clause 5 of the City’s Code of Conduct and was therefore improper.”

But Clause 5 is in a list of “general principles” of the code of conduct, and not in the sterner section labelled “rules of conduct” where Clause 18 rests. Clause 5 says councillors “should… treat others with respect, courtesy, and fairness; and… respect and value diversity in the community.”

Cr Re’s release concludes: “The outcome exonerates Cr Re and establishes that mayor Irwin’s comments to the media at the time were both incorrect and uncalled-for. Cr Re has indicated that she will be seeking a public apology from mayor Irwin.”

We asked the mayor for comment via Stirling’s media crew and got a response stating: “The mayor’s views on the social media activity in question have not changed since the City received the initial media queries about Cr Re’s social media posts in November 2023. 

“The social media activity did not align with the City’s values, and the mayor has not been requested to apologise to Cr Re by the Local Government Standards Panel or the State Administrative Tribunal. 

“The City makes extensive training and support available to elected members to support them in their roles as leaders of our diverse community.”

by DAVID BELL

A POLICY designed to protect trees on private land could inadvertently spook people into pre-emptively clearing their blocks, a former Vincent city councillor has warned.

Like other suburban councils Vincent has been looking at ways to protect its remaining canopy. 

Many trees were felled in recent decades as blocks were converted from single houses to multiple dwellings, and the struggle’s grown more urgent with the arrival of the polyphagous shot-hole borer beetle which has led to the demise of thousands of trees in Perth so far. 

Vincent council has a voluntary “Trees of Significance” register that requires planning approval to remove, but those on private land can only be nominated by the property owner. 

Owners of listed trees can get up to $2,000 of matched funding every five years, but few have ever taken up the option: In the 23 years since the Trees of Significance register was created, only nine trees on private blocks have been added. 

A revised policy drafted up by Vincent staff was put in front of councillors this week which would allow third party nominations of trees on private blocks.

Former councillor Dudley Maier warned that could scare people into pre-emptively removing trees if they feared a listing would hinder their future options for the block.

He told last week’s council briefing that he’d seen it happen before: 20 years ago the merest whisper that a tree might be nominated led to a majestic specimen being cleared from a North Perth block. 

Tree hugger

“I’m a tree hugger,” Mr Maier told last week’s council briefing, but said “stuff like this is not going to encourage a single tree to be grown or retained and it may even result in some trees being chopped down prematurely.” 

He said “the fact that the current policy does not allow third party nominations was not an oversight; It was deliberately done to stop people nominating someone else’s tree, resulting in the owner chopping down the tree to avoid the listing.”

That fear is real enough that it was recognised in a 2023 paper by the WA Local Government Association, which warned of “a likelihood of trees being preemptively removed at scale when changes are introduced that may impact the ability of landholders to remove trees without approval”.

Mr Maier told councillors: “You’ve got two choices: the carrot or the stick. The carrot is about providing meaningful incentives or education or informing people. The stick is about threatening people, imposing bureaucracy. This proposal is nowhere near being a carrot.”

He suggested consulting with the community about what might encourage them to keep trees on their blocks, suggesting they might prefer incentives like a rates discount for trees of a certain size. 

After Mr Maier’s missive at the November 13 briefing, the proposal was withdrawn from the agenda at this week’s full council meeting.

Other nearby councils have also been struggling with the issue of trees disappearing from private land: A Stirling council report from September says “residential land is proportionally the largest area of Stirling and is experiencing the most canopy decline”.

Councillors voted to consider setting aside money for an “incentive-based approach to encourage the retention and growth of large trees on private land” in the next annual budget, but they’re also sending the report on the dire state of suburban trees to the WA government in hopes of swifter state-level policy intervention.

Bayswater council is also in the midst of consulting on a new tree register policy: This version still doesn’t allow listings without the owner’s consent, but it does scrap the old rule that allowed a nomination to be blocked by a neighbour who was affected by “branches, canopy or roots of a significant tree(s) encroaching into their property”. Owners (and neighbours) of listed trees can also access matched funding for tree maintenance.

That idea’s open for comment until December 9 via engage.bayswater.wa.gov.au

by DAVID BELL

A MARATHON 24-hour swimming event to raise cash for Perth-based charity Mens Talk runs this weekend at Inglewood’s Stirling Leisure. 

Mens Talk was set up to normalise conversations about men’s mental health and support prevention of suicide.

Two of Stirling council’s top brass will join a slightly milder nine-hour swim, with mayor Mark Irwin and CEO Stevan Rodic taking the plunge as part of a 10-person staff team swimming the relay. 

A 10-person team, the Stirling Aquatic Masters, will tackle the 24-hour relay from 5pm Saturday November 23, and the nine-hour crew starts the next day at 8am to synchronise-swim their way to the finish line. 

Mr Irwin has a background in surf lifesaving, and while he says his best swimming days are behind him he’s spent recent weeks swimming laps in the Inglewood pools to prepare. 

“I’m certainly not in the best shape of my life and I’m expecting the last few legs of the relay to test me, but this is about raising money, not breaking records,” he said via media statement.

“It’s good to dive head-first into a challenge every now and then, and this is such a worthy cause to support. 

“Men should feel comfortable talking about their mental health and sharing how they’re feeling because it doesn’t just benefit them – it benefits the men around them as well.

“I like what the team at Mens Talk are doing and I’m happy to give the Swim for Life a crack to support them,” Mr Irwin said.

There’s a community fun day on Sunday with fun stuff for the kids from 10am to 3pm, entry via gold coin donation to Mens Talk.

TEN Traditional Custodians of the Kimberley are hoping Perth people hear their stories as they fight fossil fuel encroachment on their country. 

The local launch of the Kimberley Voices for Country project by Frack Free WA features guest speakers and a short film series about the 10 custodians who are passionate about protecting their land amid the rollout of the gas industry. 

Guest speakers on the night include Nuriah Jadai, a Mangala Martu Traditional Custodian, and Martin Pritchard, Environs Kimberley acting CEO.

The launch comes amid the final stages of assessment for government approval of US-based firm Black Mountain Energy’s extensive plans for hydraulic fracturing gas wells throughout the Kimberley.

It’s on at Perth City Farm on November 25 at 6.30pm, RSVP via www.frackfreewa.org.au/kimberleyvoices

A PSYCHIATRIST who has worked with people aged 13-25 for over 35 years says if a proposed social media ban is going to adequately protect young people, it should be extended to when they are 25 years old.

Prime minister Anthony Albanese has indicated he’ll have the legislation up by the end of the year, yet Sandy Seton-Browne says it doesn’t go far enough.

“There is a theory of change that we should deny anyone access to social media before they are 16,” Dr Seton-Browne said.

“If you really want to do something about it you should not let anyone under the age of 25 use it as they haven’t got developed brains.”

Dr Seton-Brown said his position was reflected in the negative impacts social media has on people with low self-esteem, pre-existing trauma and mental illness.

Impulse

“The evidence is starting to add up that social media affects our emotional learning, impulse control and regulation of our emotional behaviours. Your brain gets confused by the fact that you are being social but there’s none of the positive effects.

“You’ve got a brain that is supposed to be developing, a brain that is designed to develop in a social context, and what it’s getting exposed to is all sorts of stuff on social media rather than sitting around being bored with your mates.”

Dr Seton-Browne acknowledged the unlikelihood of banning social media for those under the age of 25, yet he believes there are other steps society can take to reduce social media’s potential to harm.

The first is to have “uncomfortable conversations” about the nature of these platforms and their operators.

“Elon Musk has a fortune and he’s just let this monster loose,” he warns.

“The simplest solution that we increase the age you’re allowed to access stuff is not going to do it, you actually have to look not at the user end but at the production end,” Dr Seton-Browne said.

He says not all social media is negative, citing its ability to foster necessary communities for marginalised groups as one of the major benefits of these platforms.

“If you’ve got a good network of friends who meet up regularly and you’re using social media to keep in touch and plan what you’re going to do then you’ve not got a problem,” Dr Seton-Browne said.

Yet the growing presence of AI on these platforms is a factor that does concern Dr Seton-Browne.

“If you are a young person who is not sure of their identity and is on social media, one of the problems if you say have anorexia and you go looking on there, you’ll get fed by the AI algorithms lots of stuff on eating disorders.”

Dr Seton-Browne primarily focused on content posted on the platform X, which uses AI algorithms to circulate misinformation and adult content.

This adult content consists of racism, hate speech and violence, which Dr Seton-Browne says, “is more pornographic to me than most porn”.

He attributes this to the difference between what is acceptable online and what is acceptable in the real world.

“Something that you do in public that would get you locked up, it’s alright to do just because you’re hiding behind anonymity.

“You need to educate parents to do a proper job with it, to reserve the right to look at their kids’ phones,” he said.

Swanbourne Primary School principal David Knox agrees.

“Young minds aren’t equipped to deal with the level of toxicity that pervades these sites and allowing your child to be exposed to this environment is damaging to their social and emotional development,” Mr Knox said in a newsletter to the parents of children attending Swanbourne Primary.

“Despite the politicians now jumping on board, it will all be for nothing if parents don’t do their job, hold their line, and disallow their children from social media sites. 

“It’s not a bad thing to tell your children ‘No’ – it’s a word they need to hear, to understand and adhere to.”

by TOBY CANN

A COMMUNITY group, formed by a local teen, will commemorate a previously forgotten Western Australian WWI unit in a 15-hour long memorial service next Saturday.

Luca Muir-Anderson, 19, is the director of the 44th Australian Infantry Battalion Memorial.

He formed the group after a passion for military history led him to discover the 44th no longer had a memorial organisation dedicated to it.

Memorial

“During the ‘90s or early 2000s, all the veterans had died, so the organisation was actually wound up,” Mr Muir-Anderson says.

“This one is the only battalion that no longer exists… and it doesn’t have its own full memorial. It was also the last battalion to go from WA… so it’s somewhat been a bit forgotten.”

The 44th Australian Infantry Battalion was formed midway through the Great War at Claremont Showgrounds in January 1916.

Made up of mostly older men in their 30s, and young men in their late teens, the Battalion trained for six months at the Showgrounds before leaving for England, and then on to the frontline in northern France.

“There was quite a process raising it… all the 20-year-olds had already joined one of the earlier battalions and [had been] decimated at Gallipoli,” Mr Muir-Anderson says.

“A total of around 2,800 served with the Battalion. There were so many casualties that they had to continually get reinforcements. 

“They suffered 482 killed; that’s about a 20 per cent chance of dying, and they suffered roughly 1200-1300 wounded.”

Mr Muir-Anderson’s work began back in April, when he decided the forgotten Battalion’s banner should be marched at the Anzac Day ceremony, now that no one else was left alive to do it.

At that point though, he was in basic training with the Australian Army.

“You’re allowed maybe 10 minutes of phone call time a week, and I just rang up one of my mates and said you need to get this done, because Anzac Day is only a month and a bit away!

“Christchurch Grammar School made the banner; it was a complete redo of the original banner, 108 years to the day, because the original banner was made in 1916 in March.”

After the success of the march, Mr Muir-Anderson decided he would continue the Battalion’s story, creating a website that lists each soldier’s history, and forming the Memorial group with friends.

“The end goal is to create a physical memorial for the Battalion,” he says.

“You see names on a wall, and maybe you see stories about some soldiers, but you never really see the stories of the average soldier. 

“You don’t get to know their full life story, and that’s something that’s really lacking.”

The 44th Australian Infantry Battalion Memorial now has around 20 members, and three dozen volunteers.

They spend hours combing through local libraries to record the histories of these forgotten soldiers.

“So far, we’ve done about 100 soldiers. We do their full life story, every battle they’ve fought in, how many days did they spend in the trenches, what did they earn – so that each soldier can be remembered,” he says.

Mr Muir-Anderson says next Saturday’s dawn till dusk ceremony is the first organised by the group, and the first ceremony celebrating the Battalion in more than 20 years.

“Instead of doing the one-hour ceremony that gets done and dusted, we decided to just go all out.”

Poems

Held at Perth War Cemetery in Nedlands, the 15-hour long proceedings will include the performance of battle stories, poems and songs about the Battalion, as well as wreath laying.

The main ceremony at 11am will be attended by local schools, cadets, and officials including WA governor Chris Dawson.

Mr Muir-Anderson says it’s been “quite chaotic” organising a 15-hour long ceremony, but despite the stress he encourages other young people to continue to take up the task of remembering Australia’s military history.

“All these historical associations, they’re all made up of really old members, and in the next decade or two they’re going to be gone. 

“So, there’s going to be no one who’s actually continuing on those stories, and it’s going to get completely forgotten unless younger generations really rise to the task.”

by MACEY TURNER

THE 2023 Christmas Lights Trail has netted silver for the City of Perth at the 2024 WA Tourism Awards, one of four awards Perth won at the November 9 event 

The Boorloo Heritage Festival also picked up a bronze, the Plateful Perth series of foodie events won silver, and Perth was also named silver medalist for the overall excellence in local government tourism award.

—

A NORANDA park is set to be named after former Bayswater councillor Graham Pittaway, shifting from its current moniker “Reserve 33533” to “Pittaway Park”.

Mr Pittaway died in 2023 at age 81, and the naming is recognition of his community service including organisations supporting the deaf, his involvement in local sports, and positions with several Catholic community associations. He served on Bayswater council from 2005 to 2013 (but serving in government doesn’t earn points for naming rights under Landgate policy). 

Former colleague, councillor Sally Palmer, suggested the naming at a council meeting in September where the idea was supported by members of Mr Pittaway’s family and won majority endorsement by councillors. 

The idea’s now out for public comment until November 25 and then it’ll go to Landgate for approval.

A Bayswater council report says the Reserve 33533 has been informally called “Maxwell Reserve” for a few decades, with the name stemming from the nearby street Maxwell Avenue. The street, apparently named for an early settler, will retain the Maxwell name.  

—

THE Planning Institute of Australia has named Stirling mayor Mark Irwin WA “Planning Champion for 2024” at the PIA WA awards on November 9.

The award goes to the person or group who’s “raised public awareness and understanding of planning”.

Mr Irwin’s nomination cited his work on the trackless tram trial as one of the major reasons, a project that’s involved bringing a trackless tram from China to Stirling to make the case for a route connecting Stirling’s centre to Scarborough Beach. 

The PIA praised Mr Irwin’s plain speaking manner and ability to “bridge the gap between planners and the public”.

A NEW attempt to get a pride flag flying out front of Bayswater council HQ is pending, following a shift in the balance of power on the council lineup. 

Cr Nat Latter has called for installing an additional pole outside the Broun Avenue council centre “for the purposes of flying other optional flags such as the Pride flag” alongside the existing four flags. 

It’d cost around $11,500 to install, and the plan is near-identical to a motion Cr Latter raised in January 2024. That was voted down with a 5/5 split and with mayor Filomena Piffaretti using her casting vote to oppose the motion. (“Pride flag push left blowin’ in the wind,” Voice, February 3, 2024).

One resident, Michael Quigley, attended the November 12 council briefing to repeat his previous opposition to the plan.

“There’s a sense of de ja vu about this notice, because we’ve seen it before,” Mr Quigley said. 

“It seems the sole purpose of the flagpole is to provide space for a flag for the Pride movement. And with almost an afterthought it says ‘and other optional flags’.

“Whatever those flags are we don’t know, and as a risk assessment person in the background I’d be concerned that if somebody wanted to raise a flag that was anti-democratic, that was antisocial, and this council refused, we may move into some form of litigation. 

“If nothing else, we may enter into some negative publicity about our particular suburb and our particular council, and that concerns me.”

Commenting on the officer’s report about the new flagpole, Mr Quigley said “it’s always been my view that a piece of cloth on top of a mast will not necessarily encourage people to access the sorts of services that the council now provides. 

“The flag itself I have no problems with, that’s their own idea and that’s what they want to be identified with, but why should the taxpayers and the ratepayers in this city that have a broad population be expected to fund this, and then maintain this?

“There’s no definable, or quantifiable, or measurable benefit that I can see in this, it just seems to be nebulous.”

When first raising the idea, Cr Latter told councillors in January: “It matters for governments to be visibly inclusive in this way because it saves lives.”

“It encourages engagement with the City and participating in civic life and… it’s incredibly meaningful for any level of government to proclaim their support for LGBTQ people in a way like this.”

While Mr Quigley observed a sense of de ja vu, there’s been one significant change since the last time this idea was debated: The council lineup.

In January 2024 the council had 10 members instead of the usual 11. Deadlocks were decided by mayor Filomena Piffaretti making a casting vote.

An extraordinary election in March 2024 saw the return of long-serving councillor Sally Palmer, potentially making for a more friendly reception to the flagpole idea when it goes to a council vote at the upcoming November 19 meeting.

by DAVID BELL