Perth Voice Interactive

A BAYSWATER recycler has remained on a list of the WA Local Government Association’s “preferred suppliers” despite a harrowing history of workplace safety breaches, which included the death of a worker.

Earlier this month Resource Recovery Solutions was hit with a record $500,000 fine for “gross negligence” over a 2016 incident where a worker’s arm was severed at the shoulder after being pulled into a conveyor belt (“Recycler negligent over severed arm,” Voice, July 18, 2020).

The Perth Magistrate’s Court heard that following a 2013 death at the company’s Jackson Street plant, a Worksafe investigation found there were a number of conveyor belts which did not have guards.

The company provided assurances workers did not go near the conveyor belts, but another worker’s arm was broken in one in 2015, leading to an official Worksafe noticing demanding they be installed. It was ignored.

Despite the repeated breaches, which led to the record fine and charges being laid against 

a company director over the 2016 amputation, when the Voice checked earlier this week, WALGA was still listing Resource Recovery Solutions as a preferred supplier.

That means councils can bypass the usual tendering processes and simply appoint the company.

WALGA CEO Nick Sloan said a review of the association’s contract with RRS had been instigated, but wouldn’t answer whether that was in response to a notification from an official source or simply because we’d asked.

But he did say WALGA “follows the advice and determinations of Worksafe WA” and also “responds to member feedback on any related incidents and issues”.

WALGA is supposed to carry out regular audits for “legal compliance, probity, risk mitigation and security of supply”, but despite repeated attempts, Mr Sloan wouldn’t answer whether WALGA’s auditor had been aware of RRS’s history.

He also wouldn’t reveal how much companies pay to be on WALGA’s preferred supplier list, saying they went through a tendering process and it was “commercial information that appropriately retains confidentiality”.

By DAVID BELL

ST PATRICK’S Community Centre has launched the second phase of its “doorstep dinners” initiative.

The program involves local businesses hit hard by Covid-19 providing meals for vulnerable members of the Freo community. 

Over the next three months, the St Pat’s team will deliver over 100 meals a night to those in need, prepared by local restaurants La Sosta, The National Hotel, Benny’s and Ronnie Nights. Recipients will also get access to other St Pat’s services such as mental health and housing support.

The first phase from April to July saw volunteers deliver more than 15,000 meals. In the second phase, the project will collaborate with Uniting WA to expand into the Perth area. The meals are paid for by the Minderoo Foundation and Freo Ports, with additional support from Lotterywest, the McCusker Foundation, Fremantle Chamber of Commerce and the City of Perth.

The program was the brainchild of St Pat’s CEO Michael Piu, who wanted to provide relief to those left particularly vulnerable by COVID-19 whilst also helping local businesses left without customers. 

National Hotel chief executive Karl Bullers, says it worked well. 

“It really is a win-win situation – it meant that we could open up the venue and that we could help in the community,” he said.

Benny’s managing director Ivan Dzeba said it helped staff who were called back to “put bread on the table”.

“When the program first started, there was nothing else going on – we were shut.  

“It was a lifeline for some of them in that respect.” 

The program will continue to be rolled out even as businesses get back on their feet, with St Pat’s under increasing pressure from a growing client list. Its fundraising coordinator Melanie Watkins, says the program revealed the extent of  food insecurity in our community. 

“Without the doorstep dinners, some of the people now receiving meals would not be eating at all, or eating little more than a slice of toast” she told the Herald. 

While there were many reasons they might be calling on St Pat’s, the meals could be life-changing, Ms Watkins said.

“People are reporting back that they have increased energy, that they want to get up in the morning.” 

Mr Dzeba said one elderly woman came into Benny’s to thank the staff personally, after working out who’d provided the food in the anonymous box. 

“She was in tears. It was incredible to see how such a little thing makes such a huge difference,” Mr Dzeba told the Herald.

PROMINENT Beaufort Street traders are fuming, claiming they’ve been left out of the latest consultation over a plan that could remove parking bays around Mount Lawley.

Stirling council is planning a piazza for the carpark at 679 Beaufort Street which will see more bays lost, and this week’s committee meeting also discussed a new “Parking Management Plan” for Mt Lawley which the traders say paints an overly-rosy picture of the current parking situation.

Members from the Mount Lawley Business Group have previously chatted with the council over the piazza and concerns any further loss of bays will kill businesses.

But at least a dozen MLBG members were left out of the latest round of formal interviews about the parking plan. 

This week’s committee agenda noted that of the 49 traders who were surveyed, “63 per cent had no concerns about parking”, leaving councillors having to scroll to other parts of the agenda to discover there was slightly wider discontent.

“The consultation was absurd,” MLBG chair Ian Cornell says. 

“The Mt Lawley Bowling Club were consulted – some distance from the town centre – yet at least 11 and probably more significant town centre businesses were not.

Astor

“Tellingly, this includes the iconic Astor Theatre; it is simply unacceptable.”

Others who weren’t consulted included Matusik Jewellers, Irving and Keenan, Michael Johnson & Co Real Estate, Mount Lawley Hardware, and more were still coming to light.

Mr Cornell said: “We call on the city to defer the consideration of these items… business in Mt Lawley is sick of being ignored by the City of Stirling, and frankly this is the last straw”.

But the committee meeting went ahead on Tuesday July 21 with a majority of councillors recommending approval of the piazza and the parking plan, only Cr Liz Re opposing both items. The recommendation now goes to full council for a formal vote on July 28. 

Stirling’s community development director Michael Quirk says there have been talks with the group’s members, and the 49 interviews for the parking management plan were carried out by a consultant.

“The surveying of local businesses was done in person with the business representative available at the time,” Mr Quirk says. “They were asked about any general concerns regarding parking availability in the area, views on parking time restrictions, their number of staff members and where they usually park.  

“The MLBG was not surveyed in the same manner. City officers met with the group in October 2019, where a range of concerns were raised, including parking. 

In direct response, the city began preparing a Parking Management Plan. The business group was provided with the Parking Management Plan scope in October 2019 and they gave feedback in November 2019. The City received more feedback from the group in December 2019 and City officers, along with the appointed parking consultant, then met directly with the group again in December 2019. City officers and the parking consultant then met again with the business group in July 2020 to inform them of the Parking Management Plan outcomes.”

Despite that recent meeting, MLBG members tell us they were blindsided by the items even appearing in front of the committee this week, and wouldn’t have known about it save for a member who happened to spot them.

Along with concerns over the consultation, the MLBG reckons the council has miscounted the number of carbays in the area. They brought in their own expert for a recount, and Mr Cornell says the city’s survey had “an over-count on public bays of some 27,” and an undercount of private bays by 69.

Mr Quirk says the city hasn’t been provided any information substantiating that its count was incorrect. 

Seventeen bays were sold off by Stirling when it sold a nearby strip of land on Walcott Street, and seven will go if the car park at 679 Beaufort Street is turned into a piazza.

By DAVID BELL

We are NOT all in this together

SINCE the devastating COVID19 virus lockdown in early April we’ve been assailed by the togetherness mantra/‘chantra’. 

Health-wise yes, we get it. But economically NO! We are NOT all in this together’. Only half of us are. The rest are still living high on the hog, just as the federal government is about to wind back JobKeeper, a vital economic rescue package especially for small business.

To date neither the PM nor any members of the federal government, its well-heeled bureaucracy, or even folk working in the big end of town including in banks, have stumped up one dollar from their own pockets as part of a government strategy to fight the viral ‘war’. Not one dollar. Not one cent.

By contrast, the Chook along with many other small businesses have taken a battering on the front line.

In a nutshell, we have foregone hundreds of thousands of dollars in our conscripted ‘war’ against the lethal virus.   

And we are not alone. There are tens of thousands of businesses in the same boat. They represent up to half the economy, in particular that 30 percent of the economy – mainly small business – shut down by government decree because they were at the crossroad of our nation’s social interaction. 

They have largely borne this burden alone after the government took the sledgehammer to their commercial hearts ‘for the common good’. 

Freeloaders

Meanwhile the other half of the economy, those yet untouched by the virus have yet to pull their weight. They are truly the ‘freeloaders’, as yet economically unconscripted in the fight against the killer virus, living life with nary a care in the world. 

And along with the politicians you know who you are: you are the ones with no sleepless nights worrying about your mortgages. Or where your next pay cheque is coming from.

Now, for the past few weeks the prime minister and federal treasurer have been softening up the country to expect major changes to its poorly-crafted JobKeeper business support programme, with a crucial announcement in a few days, possibly signalling its end. 

JobKeeper was born out of political panic by a completely unprepared federal government caught on the hop by a virus. 

It was launched after Melbourne billionaire retailer Solomon Lew, on the first day of the lockdown, shut hundreds of his stores across Australia, said he would not be paying rent as he turfed 10,000 staff onto the dole queues in one fell swoop. Many other businesses followed suit.

The spectacle of thousands of Australians milling in the dole queues shocked the government into action to extend an economic safety net for the hardest hit.

But now even before the virus is contained, with Victorians exploding their viral loads across their state and possibly the nation, the chief ‘freeloaders’ in the federal government 

– the prime minister and treasurer – are now moving to reduce the economic rescue package.

Instead of talking about how the economic safety net can be improved the Morrison Liberal government has started to target those who have done all the economic heavy lifting as the problem: small business, the artists and entertainers, the young and women, our ‘Viral War Heroes’. You can hear it in his tone.

Unless he changes course, Morrison will surely end up like that hugely popular British war time prime minister Winston Churchill who was turfed out unceremoniously by struggling, weary, ‘forgotten’ war hero voters in 1945. 

In Morrison’s case the voters will be the ‘war heroes’ who carried the brunt of the ‘war effort’ against the killer virus while he, so far a true ‘freeloader’, sat far away behind the front lines in Canberra. 

By ANDREW SMITH

HISTORY in the making will be a big focus at this year’s Vincent Local History Awards, with a call for entries that document the impact of Covid-19 and restrictions on the community.

Along with entries on historic people, places or events in Vincent, the Local History Centre is hoping to see modern day documentation of drive-by birthdays and Anzac Days in driveways.

Vincent mayor Emma Cole says it’s the 20th anniversary of the awards: “We mark this during a year of great challenge and change. A lot of people used their time staying home to spring clean their homes and trawl through old boxes. We would love to see any historic photos, slides or documents that were unearthed.

“We are also keen to collect more recent diary entries, documents or photographs that tell the story of what it was like to live through Covid-19 in Vincent,” Ms Cole said.

Leederville resident Tzanis Palioudakis is working on one of the historic entries having spent the past five months learning about his great-grandmother Christina Kongras, a pillar of the Mount Hawthorn community.

She migrated from Greece and owned and ran the Olive Oil Fishmonger on Scarborough Beach Road from the 1940s to 1980s.

He told the Local History Centre: “Although she died before I was born, I want to honour her life and make sure her story is known.”

He says she was “a strong, independent woman with a head for business as well as her family and community. She opened a shop in war stricken times in the 1940s and I feel that was an achievement in itself.

“She ran her shop at 151 Scarborough Beach Road at a time when women, especially those from non-English speaking countries, were expected to play secondary roles to men in these fields.”

Entries close September 30, and there’s more info at the Local History Centre (9273 6534, or at the centre inside the Loftus Street library weekdays 9am to 1pm). 

ABOUT 50 protesters gathered at Fiona Stanley Hospital on Monday night demanding a Tamil refugee and her family be returned to their home in Biloela, Queensland. 

Priya Murugappan had been detained on Christmas Island with her husband Nades and two children since 2019 but was transferred to Perth last week after complaining about severe abdominal pain for several weeks.

Danila Dilba Health 

Service senior medical officer Iyngaranathan Selvaratnam said Ms Murugappan had already faced “inordinate delays and denials of specialist treatment” while in detention and now had to endure emergency medical procedures without the support of her family, who remain on the island. 

Australian Border Force officials have limited her husband Nades’ access to Wi-fi in the detention centre, preventing the couple from making video calls, sending photos or using social media to keep in contact.

Fremantle Refugee Rights Action Network founder Janet Parker said the rally was an essential show of support for the Murugappans through the medical issues, but also had a broader agenda.

“In the short term, our urgent demand is that Priya and her family be returned to the town of Biloela to enable them to live a good life,” Ms Parker said.

“The only life the children know is that of being prisoners.”

The couple arrived in Australia separately in 2012 and 2013 on temporary protection visas, settling in Biloela and raising two children while Mr Murugappan worked in the local meatworks.

They were taken into custody by ABF officers, police and Serco guards during a dawn raid in 2018, and following a series of court cases and appeals which determined they weren’t genuine refugees, the couple were taken to Christmas Island in 2019.

Detention

“In my opinion, offshore detention centres need to be closed not only for the benefit of refugees, but it is also way cheaper for the government,” Ms Parker said. 

There is no economic, political or humanitarian sense in locking people up on Christmas Island.

“Our government is a signatory to the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and it is expected that we will afford safety to people who are fleeing persecution, yet instead we are locking people up,” Ms Parker said.

Human Rights organisations say Sri Lanka remains a dangerous country for minority groups, particularly following the election of Gotabaya Rajapaksa as president in November 2019.

Ms Parker called for the Australian government to end its relationship with Sri Lankan, saying Mr Rajapaksa’s previous term in office saw a genocidal campaign which saw many Tamils killed or arbitrarily detained.

“Our government continues to support governments like this and I think this needs to be examined,” Ms Parker said. 

Dr Selvaratnam said Ms Murugappan is highly critical of the staff from International Health and Medical Services on Christmas Island, saying they showed little care in wanting to diagnose the actual cause of her severe pain. 

He said her symptoms could have been from a number of life-threatening conditions and Christmas Island’s medical facilities were pretty basic. 

by KRISTEN RICCIARDI

BUSINESSES will have to prove their bona fides before voting in this year’s Perth council elections.

Businesses, which can get two votes, play a huge role in the capital city contest where there are low resident numbers, but the recent state inquiry into the council heard allegations of “sham leases” to rig elections.

Not checked

State regulations allow, but don’t require, council staff to check if a business voter is actually eligible by requesting to see a lease or agreement that proves they have the right to occupy a property.

The inquiry heard those checks never took place. 

Governance manager Mark Ridgwell, who’d been delegated the authority to check, said they requested documentation for candidates, but not for business voters.

Three weeks ago former councillor Reece Harley contacted commissioners calling for a clampdown to ensure a clean election: “I strongly urge you to ensure that the CEO of the City requests a copy of every relevant lease for all current, and future “occupier” electors on the City’s owner/occupier roll,” he wrote.

“The Act explicitly empowers the CEO to request copies of leases in order to determine eligibility. 

“Given what we know has transpired at the city … I consider this an essential measure to ensure the integrity of the upcoming City of Perth council elections.” 

Shortly afterwards the city’s election information page stated they would be requiring “evidence of the legal right to occupy the property” for all business vote applications. 

Mr Harley has since referred several 2017 electoral roll oddities to commissioners, after noticing large numbers of business votes going to sole addresses. 

In one instance nearly a dozen votes were registered at a single office suite, which would normally only be eligible for two. 

This week the City told us they’d start “a process of reviewing existing electoral enrolments”.

Integrity

Mr Harley tells us “it’s good to see the city’s new administration taking the issue of electoral integrity seriously. I welcome a close and full audit of the city’s electoral rolls to ensure that all electors are indeed eligible”.

Last week former councillor Jim Adamos pleaded not guilty to charges relating to what police alleged to be a “sham lease at a property in East Perth” which “enabled electors to be enrolled that were otherwise not eligible to vote”.

by DAVID BELL

CHICKENS have come back to roost at Roxy Lane Community Garden in Maylands, after they were temporarily re-homed due to an anonymous complaint.

A few months ago someone complained to the council that the chicken enclosure touched the side of the garden’s property, while the city’s chicken-keeping rules require the enclosure to be free-standing. 

The rule is mainly intended to keep hens away from neighbours, but still applied even though the Roxy Lane enclosure was up against a laneway and opposite a carpark. It had to be taken down. 

Donated

Garden founder Catherine Ehrhardt had donated the chickens in December last year. 

She says it was a shame to have to take down the original enclosure since kids walking down the laneway loved to interact with the chickens through the fence and they were a good advertisement to bring in new members. 

The chooks were re-homed and spent a few months with RLCG chair Marie Tatham. Members scrounged around for odds and ends to rebuild the chicken hutch, trying to keep costs low and minimise trips to the hardware store for new materials. 

This week the door was installed and the chickens have a new compliant enclosure and new hutch to roost in. Members are calling it the “Chicken Hilton”. 

Foster care

We can’t guarantee these three are the same chickens who’d lived there, since they got mixed in with some other very similar looking hens at one of the stages of their foster care journey. But they seemed right at home within minutes of arriving, having a great time destroying the overgrown winter plants in their enclosure. 

After a Covid-related break, the garden’s open days are back on every second Saturday (9am to 11ish) and they’re keen for new members. Events are announced at “Roxy Lane Community Garden” Facebook page. 

A radish to relish

THIS Voice reporter has somehow never done a “big vegetable” story, but luckily was in the right spot to pick one up while meeting the chickens when Catherine Ehrhardt noticed a monster radish emerging among the borage leaves.

Usually veggies get picked on open days for members to divide up and take what they need. But the garden’s been quiet during Covid restrictions, with member Rodney Clifford spending most of his week down there to keep an eye on things.

The downtime let this radish grow to a prodigious size. There were no scales on site but it felt like this giant weighed around 3kg. 

Stories by DAVID BELL

FORMER Nightline host Graham Maybury is back behind the microphone for the first time in six years in the podcast Demystifying Aged Care.

Covering topics like dementia, aged care living and the financial challenges of retirement, each 30-minute episode features Mr Maybury in conversation with independent experts and older West Australians and their families.

“Doing the podcasts gave a clear reminder of something I’d discovered over my years on Nightline – the vital importance of having informed, independent advice from a trusted source,” Mr Maybury says.

“An opportunity to ask all your questions and have all the potential pitfalls pointed out and fine print explained. 

“It was a brilliant idea of the producers to include people who have been on the journey from home to residential aged care; for example, or when your spouse develops dementia. They are living proof there is a way through.” 

The well-known broadcaster hung up his headphones at 6PR six years ago, so he knows first-hand the challenges that come with getting older.

“Personally, financially and vocationally it’s a new landscape in ways no one told me about beforehand,” Mr Maybury says.

“It brings challenges – but also great flexibility and new opportunities. 

“I miss ‘the Nightline family’ and my radio colleagues, but my community work continues in different forms and I’ve enjoyed the new experience of serving on several ethics committees.”

Over the years the broadcaster has hosted many heated late night discussions with ratepayers complaining about this and that, so we couldn’t resist asking him who he thinks should be the next mayor of Perth. 

“Rejoicing in the knowledge that it won’t be me, I will leave that choice to the ratepayers of the City of Perth and respect the democratic process as I always did over the years on Nightline”.

Produced by Baptist Care, the podcast Demystifying Aged Care is available here: http://www.baptistcare.com.au/podcast