Perth Voice Interactive

ANZ has closed its branch at Flinders Square in Yokine, leaving customers with a long commute if they need in-person banking.

ANZ temporarily closed many branches across the country as a result of the coronavirus, but has since announced that some branches, like Yokine, will not reopen. 

Labor MPs Simon Millman (Mt Lawley) and David Michael (Balcatta) are calling on ANZ to reopen the branch and are collecting signatures for a petition.

Mr Millman says: “It’s a bit of a disappointment that the bank’s made the decision at this time.

“The government’s doing a lot to try to stimulate economic activity, and this bank provides important jobs at the Flinders Square shopping centre.

“They provide an essential service that people rely on; particularly vulnerable sections of the community who have already struggled through the last six months of the coronavirus and now have the added burden of having to travel further afield to access their local banking services.

“The second thing is these branches bring people into our neighbourhood … the banking customers who would have previously gone to this branch and shopped and grabbed a coffee at a local cafe, they’ll be customers lost to this centre.”

ANZ’s district manager for Perth Nadia Tamigi told the Voice: “Our customers don’t use branches like they used to and demand in our contact centres, which manage hardship and other customer enquiries, has grown dramatically at the same time. 

“We have needed to redeploy staff from some branches to where our customers need them most.” One of those customer hubs is soon to open in Perth and the staff from the shuttered Yokine branch may head there.

Ms Tamigi says the majority of customers prefer online banking now.

“Not reopening this temporarily closed branch is partly because we believe these changes in customer behaviour are here to stay. While branch use has been declining for some time, the current environment has accelerated the change.”

By DAVID BELL

STIRLING council is going ahead with plans for a plaza that’ll result in lost parking bays on the Mount Lawley leg of Beaufort Street.

The council voted at the July 28 meeting to progress a streetscape improvement plan that includes a plaza at the carpark near Westpac. 

The final design’s not set in stone but it’s looking like at least seven bays will be lost, on top of the 17 bays that are going to be lost to the public realm from the council’s contentious sale of nearby land at 80a Walcott Street.

The Mount Lawley Business Group implored the council to defer the item so they could have more time to weigh in and straighten out what they call “large and concerning errors in the number of bays” in the council’s own count.

The group also wanted deferral of a new parking management plan that’s intended to manage the loss of bays.

More than a dozen prominent businesses weren’t included in the formal consultation 

that led to the parking plan’s writing, despite their bays being necessary to its success. 

One of the plan’s strategies is “shared parking arrangements,” asking businesses to open their private bays for public use when they’re not needed, and in return the council rangers handle parking enforcement. 

The MLBG says trade is already suffering from lack of parking, and on top of the loss of bays the plaza plan will cut off carpark access from Beaufort Street. 

The only other way in is a narrow one-car-wide Astor Lane, and the group says it’s another deterrent to shoppers.

MLBG chair Ian Cornell says it’s “unacceptable to the patrons of our businesses. They will seek a less troublesome environment”. 

Only Cr Elizabeth Re voted against progressing both items.

Tuesday’s vote means $275,000 can be spent on installing planter boxes, new street furniture, designing the plaza, designing and installing a “mural art series and heritage trail,” and “uplighting of art deco motifs on light polls”.  

About $500,000 will still need to be allocated in next year’s budget to actually build the plaza.

Eye-opening assessment revealed at CEO’S farewell

Murray Jorgensen oversaw his last council meeting this week.

PERTH city council CEO Murray Jorgensen leaves this week after just under two years in the job.

Unlike the last two CEOs who were sacked before their contracts were up, Mr Jorgensen was always intended to be a short-term CEO installed to get the organisation on the straight and narrow.

At this week’s council meeting chair commissioner Andrew Hammond farewelled the CEO saying he’d transformed the city and assembled a solid team.

Cmmr Hammond recalled an early meeting between commissioners and Mr Jorgensen: “I can remember the defining discussion that we had. There was myself, the late Eric Lumsden, and Gaye [McMath] around the table. [Mr Jorgensen] said: ‘Look, I was advised that there were some problems at the City of Perth when I started, but I can tell you now that it is much, much worse than what you ever imagined’.

“I just left that meeting shaking my head, and sadly that proved to be right. But in saying that, to Murray’s very great credit he took the challenge on and has done an absolutely remarkable job.”

Mr Jorgensen gave a brief speech and said his time there was the most challenging, but satisfying, job he’d taken on.

“I couldn’t have done anything on my own,” Mr Jorgensen said.

“We’ve been fortunate to have very clear guidance and direction from commissioners but I think the thing that goes unreported and unrecognised is the dedication and professionalism and the efforts that take place 24/7 by an amazing group of people, and if I’m leaving a legacy it’s the people I’m leaving.”

When he arrived the staff numbers had ballooned to around 700, though there was no precise system to even track exactly how many were on the books. 

He cut the number of management staff by half and replaced five “directors” with general managers of four “alliances” intended to clearly outline responsibilities and break down the old feudal silo system. 

He brought in a crackdown on the council’s lax tendering process, and introduced long-term planning. Not every plan was a home run hit, with last year’s “Cultural Development Plan” criticised as taking the Christ out of Christmas with too much of a nod towards diversity. 

He’ll be replaced by Michelle Reynolds who’s finishing up as executive director of the Rottnest Island Authority.

BY DAVID BELL

POLICE want to identify a woman accused of pinning a car clamping contractor between two cars at a Bayswater carpark.

Around 8.40am on Saturday July 11, a driver for Auto Clamp parked behind an illegally parked car in the privately-owned King William Street carpark and warned the driver to move on or get clamped.

As the driver was backing up, police say a woman approached the parking contractor and forcefully pushed him. He was briefly pinned between his car and the reversing car before the other drove away. 

The clamper was shaken and saw a doctor but didn’t require any more medical treatment.

Police describe the woman as around 60, light skinned, solid build with “long, sandy, greying hair,” a floral top and dark long pants. The driver was around 70, 153cm tall and black/greying hair.

Auto Clamp boss Susan Chapman related the incident when we contacted her about another complaint from the same carpark a day before. A driver who’d stopped to get a pre-dawn coffee was clamped at 6.40am and costing $170 to get it off, despite no adjacent businesses being open. 

Ms Chapman said her drivers are “well within our rights to clamp” on private property that hires them.

The McGowan government is working on a bill to ban car clamps but Ms Chapman says the ban will make it hard for businesses to keep their carparks free for customers. 

Police want anyone who knows the accused pusher or the driver to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 (reference number 9709) or www. crimestopperswa.com.au 

SOMETIMES the only thing between a girl and a grand final dream is a good pair of boots, and the Mount Lawley/Inglewood Roos junior footy club is trying to bridge that gap with an exchange program.

With kids often growing out of their boots before they’re really scuffed, the club started the el-cheapo exchange; giving the oldies a clean, a four-week quarantine, and a new pair of laces.

It’s usually a fiver to swap boots or $10 to buy a pair, but at the club’s July 26 Auskick open day, exchange boss Wade Lapelms noticed many girls sitting on the sidelines watching their brothers play and started handing boots out for free. 

Club president Lisa Quartermain (the first female president) says they’re hoping to build up enough numbers through the Auskick 5-8 year-olds program for their first girls team in the next season or two.

Forge

“The club’s 47 years old and we’ve never had a girls-only team, so we’re keen to do everything we can to forge a path ahead for them,” Ms Quartermain says.

They have a few girls playing on younger boys’ teams, but Ms Quartermain says they tend to drop out around year 8 when the lads bulk up.

Ms Quartermain says girls want to get involved because they too have “just a natural instinct that they’ve got the ability to play the game. They love the game and they follow the game. 

“When I was at school I would have loved the opportunity to play footy, but we never got it, it wasn’t a consideration.”

There’s another Have-A-Go-Day on August 2, and the Auskick session for 5-8 year-olds happens every Sunday from 8.30am at Inglewood oval. 

Mt Lawley Labor MP Simon Millman has been touring local clubs as they get back on the field post-corona and spotted the Roos’ boots exchange: “[It’s] so important to creating an entry point for girls and women accessing sport,” he said.

“These girls are our future for Australian women in sport on the national and international stage.”

BY DAVID BELL

THE hard waste currently gracing Vincent’s verges may be the last.

Vincent council this week considered options to replace the annual roadside rubbish collection, with the quality of scavengable waste steadily dropping in recent years: Gumtree, Facebook marketplace and “Buy Nothing” groups have made decorating your house from roadside treasures a distant memory.

Mayor Emma Cole told the Voice 85 per cent of what’s left on the road ends up in landfill. The council’s garbage strategy calls for zero waste to landfill by 2028. 

The council’s been considering a replacement for the annual pickup since a motion by Cr Josh Topelberg last year.

Junk-strewn

At this week’s council meeting he said it was timely they were considering their next step while verges were junk-strewn, highlighting “some of the poor outcomes of the current system”. 

“I bumped into a real estate agent on Sunday who’d just come from a home open, and had someone who made a comment to them that they felt they were ‘in the Bronx’ when they came to visit” due to all the verge leavings.

He said this week’s rain ruined many items that might have be salvageable, while outsiders were jumping council borders to dump their loads.

In March a council “Community Engagement Panel” mulled over five main options and many variations.

The panel narrowed it down to three, with a couple variations:

• Continue the current $210,000pa system which results in 691 tonnes of garbage on verges;

• Give residents an on-request skip bin once a year, which is predicted to lead to people throwing out less (an estimate of 408 tonnes a year if it’s a charged service, or  673 tonnes if it’s free). It’s the most expensive option: $255,000 a year if they cover some costs with a fee, or $421,000 if it’s free; or,

•  An annual by-request pickup of up to two cubic metres of waste. It’s estimated to lead to locals throwing out only 200 tonnes a year if they have to pay for it, or 329 tonnes if it’s free. Also the cheapest option for the council ($72,000 if they charge, $119,000 if it’s free).

Wider community consultation on those options is scheduled for August, with council to decide in September, and the new system ready for July 2021. 

“We have in the past experienced very disparate views, with some people being incredibly passionate about the survival of the bulk rubbish collection,” Ms Cole said.

She said she got a text message from someone wanting to meet up with her and tell her about how verge collection time had been a community-building exercise for their street.

Cr Topelberg said “the option of ‘do nothing’ or ‘continue as is’ is a non-option in my personal view. Piles of junk and dangerous goods on verges is no longer an acceptable outcome.”

BY DAVID BELL

ST PATRICK’S Anglican church in Mt Lawley was on point to raising more than $7,000 this week to help repair storm damage.

The church held a Mediaeval Longtable Feast on July 24 where diners were treated 

to the spectacle of historical combatants clashing in the aisles. 

St Pat’s spent the Covid-lockdown providing hundreds of meals to people in need as restrictions closed off regular services.

But the Beaufort Street church needed a little love itself after copping a battering in late May as a great storm arose on the trails of Cyclone Mangga. 

It turned out to be the biggest fundraising dinner they’ve had. Nearly 150 people showed up to see some mediaeval entertainment from Ursa Major HEMA Academy (Historical European martial arts) who battered each other with a variety of Middle Ages and Renaissance weaponry.

The church had to go online-only for a lot of the restriction period, then moved to pre-book attendances to handle contact tracing through June, but is now back doing regular Sunday morning services.

“CLOSE your eyes and just listen,” says Ron Bradfield Jnr, a saltwater Bardi man from the Kimberley region who now resides in Perth.

”Take time to hear people’s individual stories.”

Storytelling has been part of Indigenous culture for over 65,000 years, which is why Northbridge’s Centre For Stories has organised The Future of Black Lives Matter, which combines a mix of stories about racial oppression and division, together with a method to provide healing and understanding so the BLM movement won’t stall without making some progress.

The event will be facilitated by South African writer Sisonke Msmiang and feature Noongar speakers, actor Kylie Bracknell and activist Tanesha Bennell, Bardi man Ron Bradfield Jnr, and British Caribbean man Colin Archibald. 

While the BLM movement was sparked by the death of George Floyd in the United States, Australia’s own grim history of oppression has seen large rallies in Perth.

Mr Archibald, who works as a youth mentor, says there is a sense of urgency following the protests; they helped get the message about discrimination out, but people needed more resources to take away so they could help deal with the issues.

The event will showcase each speaker’s personal stories and encourage listeners to keep an open mind in understanding racism within local communities. 

“I wanted to create an event with a different approach, 

a global dynamic, so when people turn up they can gain an understanding that a few weeks of protesting is not just random, it’s a result of hundreds of years of racial divide.”

Mr Archibald said going to a BLM rally in Perth made him think about his own history; his parents immigrated from Jamaica to the United Kingdom, and he knows only too well the traumatic effects of racial discrimination. 

“While we seem to be living a normal life there’s all this trauma embedded in us and it’s been a battle for most of our lives; how we are perceived in society, the assumptions based upon race. 

“Having a variety of black perspective may offer a deeper insight into race relations, and we just want to walk together equally.” Mr Archibald said.

Mr Bradfield says he wants to use storytelling platforms to try to bring Australians together: “When understanding stories we need to consider the context, allow the conversations to keep happening so the younger generations don’t have to suffer the angst we have.”

Pay-what-you-feel tickets available from https://centreforstories.com/event/the-future-of-black-lives-matter and all proceeds go to Aboriginal legal services.

By STACEY HARDING