Perth Voice Interactive

LIVE music returned to the city this week as residents in East and West Perth emerged from their balconies to musicians playing for the neighbourhood.

Activate Perth’s City Sessions socially-distanced show on April 12 brought 15 artists to balconies, tennis courts and rooftops to liven up quarantine life for people in apartments.

The idea came about after East Perth Community Group chair Anne-Maree Ferguson was inspired by scenes of residents in northern Italy keeping up morale by singing to each other from their balconies.

The EPCG ran the first session on March 22 in East Perth, and after a warm response Activate Perth put in funding for an expanded April 12 show, bringing in the West Perth Local community group for that wing. 

Activate Perth chair Di Bain says “it was amazing… we were overwhelmed with the number of responses from people just saying how nice it was”.

They had to get the event cleared with Perth council and police, but crowd control was pretty easy with everyone used to keeping apart. 

“We had to submit a risk assessment, we had to make sure everyone was social distancing, so I went down as crowd control and I took my little dog. I got messages from people saying it was so nice to see your little dog blissfully unaware of everything!”

Ms Bain says there’s more to come: “We’re working up to another couple of sessions, one for Mother’s Day and one for WA Day”.

by DAVID BELL

Bayswater council is fine with a slightly expanded WA government control zone, as long as the state takes care of the parks.

THE Bayswater train station upgrade rolls along with the WA government selecting a tenderer to design and build the station, platform and surrounds.

The tenderer is Evolve Bayswater Alliance, a project name of Coleman Rail, subsidiary of the Spanish-based infrastructure giant Acciona. 

This $253 million stage will link the Midland line to Metronet’s Forrestfield-airport link and the Morley-Ellenbrook Line.

Coleman has previously handled local projects including the Ashton Street Bridge, Hamilton Street Bridge, and the two new bridges on Albany Highway.

Transport minister Rita Saffioti announced the selection saying “building this project, combined with construction of other nearby major projects like the Tonkin Gap and Morley-Ellenbrook Line, will help support the WA economy through some tough times ahead.

“In times like these it’s important we continue to progress the projects that will provide work for local businesses and keep workers in their jobs. This will ultimately support the state’s wider economy.”

The WA government has taken over interim planning control of the station’s surrounds off Bayswater council, in order to bring in larger developments and a bigger population to make use of the train station upgrades.

Currently the WAPC handles applications in the area. 

The official boundaries of the full takeover area were announced March 20 and cover a larger patch than first announced, creeping northwards to include two large parks: Mills Avenue Park and Halliday Park.

Bayswater council itself had requested the expansion back in June 2019, with a council agenda stating the parks will need to be “protected” and “enhanced… to meet the needs of the growing population”.

If the parks were left outside the state’s control area then any of the protecting and enhancing would be done on council dime.

The newly announced boundaries and the complete takeover come into effect late 2020, and then decisions will be made by Labor’s planning supergroup DevelopmentWA. 

by DAVID BELL

TWO Leederville parks owned by Vincent council will not be sold off, following a unanimous vote by councillors.

Council staff recommended selling off five lots to help finance Covid-19 relief efforts and soften the blow to city coffers (“Land sale for Covid-19 relief,” Voice, April 4, 2020). 

At the April 7 meeting councillors pulled the two chunks of public open space at lots 74 and 100 Brentham Street off the table entirely. 

They’ll still move ahead with selling two smaller lots, both awkward nubs of land that are probably only useful to the immediate neighbour (150 Charles Street and 202 Vincent Street). 

The council’s newly-formed Covid-19 Relief and Recovery Committee will set a minimum price after a real estate agent values the lots, and the money will be quarantined in a reserve until the next budget. 

Mayor Emma Cole, who’d flagged ahead of the meeting she wasn’t keen on selling off public open space, said it was worth looking at the council’s landholdings to see if they were being well utilised, but added “it’s a difficult time for councillors to be making decisions around large tracts of land when we’re just starting into a crisis”.

She said reviewing the city’s properties needs to be done “in a way where we bring the community along with us and explain why… and give an opportunity for the community to engage in that”. 

The council will now consult on potentially selling a block at 26 Brentham Street, the music house they got in a recent land swap deal with Aranmore Primary School.

The portion of the Barlee Street Carpark that the city owns has also been moved from the “sell now” list to the “ask the public” list, as has the narrow block at 10 Monmouth Street. 

What ratepayers say

Highgate’s Peter Le: “Why is the city selling public open spaces, when the city goes to great lengths to close residents’ streets to create open spaces? I ask councillors to reject or defer the decision in order to get a better understanding of the city’s financial future before making any rash decisions.”

Mt Hawthorn’s Norelle O’Neill: “You have all been granted the privilege of being the custodians, not owners, of the city’s much loved open spaces, so you can protect and nurture them for future generations. Open spaces belong to the community for healing, not profiteering developers.

LABOR’S federal Perth MP Patrick Gorman has penned a notice of motion imploring the Morrison government to rescue artists slipping through the Covid-19 welfare cracks.

The motion calls the arts sector “an essential part of our economy, our community and our identity”.

It says the Covid-19 coronavirus has “destroyed the livelihoods of thousands of working artists” including writers, designers, illustrators, musicians, fine artists, filmmakers and children’s entertainers.

The JobKeeper payments don’t apply to a lot of the artists working gig-to-gig, and Mr Gorman’s called for a “tailored package of support to the arts sector”.

arts with almost every event cancelled, and a lot of the backup seasonal gigs artists do on the side like bar or restaurant jobs also drying up. 

The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance estimates “tens of thousands of freelance and casual performers and crew” are denied Jobkeeper. 

Many are freelance performers and crew hired for short-term contracts for one show or season, and casuals can only get Jobkeeper if they’ve been with the same employer for 12 months.

The notice of motion, seconded by federal Fremantle MP Josh Wilson, is scheduled to be moved on the next sitting date in August but Mr Gorman wants the federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg to act sooner. 

Mr Gorman says the August date is “disappointing” and Labor is pushing for an earlier reconvening: “If we sit in April or May I will seek to have this motion listed for debate that week.

“In the meantime, the motion is one way of putting pressure on the government to change their position.

“Under the laws, treasurer Josh Frydenberg has the power to extend the program to those who currently miss out.

“The only thing standing between the arts community and support through the JobKeeper program is the treasurer’s signature.”

The discretion was built into the bill to let the treasurer act without having to recall parliament. 

Labor and the Greens have both been urging the treasurer to extend the package to other groups left out, like temporary visa-holders and casual employees who weren’t at their current job for at least 12 months. 

by DAVID BELL

THE first woman elected to a WA road board is set to be honoured with Bayswater council naming Nellie Tant Reserve after her.

Nellie Fawdrey Tant (1880 to 1949) was elected to the Belmont-Bayswater Road Board on April 9, 1921, before resigning the next year. 

The park, informally named The Strand Reserve, is the patch of green across from Essex Street Reserve.

Bayswater council wrote to 608 landowners and residents nearby, and got 10 submissions, eight of them supportive. 

Councillors will vote on whether to support the naming on April 21, and the WA government’s Landgate gets to make the final decision.

Landgate policy opposes naming places after someone for their public service, but a Bayswater council report says they hope she’ll be “considered  exception due to her outstanding achievement” in being the first woman elected to a road board. 

Despite only having a short stint on the Belmont-Bayswater Road Board in 1921-1922, Nellie Fawdrey Tant was already active in the background of WA’s suffragette movement. 

A member of the Maylands Spiritualist Church, she was a key player in the Women’s Service Guilds of WA, which helped get the first woman elected to local government in 1920 when Elizabeth Chapman becoming a Cottesloe Councillor. 

The WSG lobbied successfully to have the Municipal Corporations Act amended in 1919 as it disqualified women from running for councils.

It also pushed for the introduction of the Qualification of Women for Parliament Bill, which paved the way for Edith Cowan to become Australia’s first female MP.

Western Australia was noted as being pretty progressive on women’s issues at the time: The WSG started west before branching out into other states.

The news of Mrs Tant’s election made the “Tea-Table Gossip” section of the NSW Sunday Times. It announced her win with a small article stating: “West Australia still goes ahead as the state with the progressive women”; the article sandwiched below society gossip and just above a recipe for steak and kidney pudding.

England-born, Nellie Tant had three children (including another Nellie who became night superintendent at RPH) and died December 26 1949 “in her 70th year”. 

by DAVID BELL