Perth Voice Interactive

VINCENT mayor Emma Cole says she’s planning to kybosh her council’s plans to sell off parkland under the guise of funding Coronavirus relief efforts.

Staff have asked councillors to sell off five blocks of “miscellaneous” land, ranging from an awkward 294sqm wedge to a grand 5,760sqm double lot on Brentham Street that’s zoned for passive recreation and is dotted with mature trees.

If the council rezones the Brentham Street land to R60, staff reckon it could be sold for developers who could put up “44 residential dwellings”

The sales could “aid the city’s financial stability in the short to medium term and fund the city’s Covid-19 relief and response efforts”, a report to the Aril 7 meeting says.

But Ms Cole told the Voice while it made sense to sell small, awkwardly-shaped lots that were only useful to immediate neighbours, she doesn’t want open space sold off and is planning to put up an amendment taking Brentham Street off the table.

“I’m not keen to sell land and see it go into general revenue,” she added, saying funds should go into reserves for asset maintenance, or the “public open space” reserve to buy new land or upgrade parks.

The issue came up at Tuesday’s briefing, where councillors usually hold their cards pretty close to their chests; but there was an air of unease and some questioned the mention of Covid-19 and whether the sales could even happen in time to help.

“Some of these are 12 months to two years away from happening,” Cr Dan Loden pointed out.

The city has a general shortage of parks, but the staff report said Brentham Street is “excessive for the local area”.

The vote happens at the next council meeting on April 7. They’re being held remotely so queries or statements for public question time have to be submitted to governance@vincent.wa.gov.au by 3pm the day of the meeting.

The cost of Covid-19 to the city is still an unknown, but Ms Cole says they’ve projected a rough $4.2 million loss for the financial quarter April to June.

It stems from the closure of facilities like Beatty Park, empty parking bays, cancelled events which usually bring in parking revenue.

Rangers have also been instructed to focus on community safety instead of parking fines. The fourth quarter of rates instalments may also see a lot of people defaulting if they’ve lost their jobs.

On March 30 a special council meeting was held to get the ball rolling on Coronavirus relief measures including suspending debt collection and waiving interest on outstanding rates.

by DAVID BELL

If you’ve managed to weather Covid-19’s economic storm and kept your business open, congratulations; we know exactly what you’ve had to go through.

But with the streets empty, letting people know that you’re still doing trade is more important than ever. If they can’t see you, they won’t know you’re there.

That’s why advertising in the Perth Voice is still the most effective way of getting your message to potential customers living in your area.

We’re in their letterbox week in, week out. 

And with everyone a bit housebound at the moment, a paper packed full of local news will be read from cover to cover.

Because we know how tough it is out there, we’ve got some great deals going, so if you’re a cafe or restaurant offering takeaways, a tradie still out there helping with emergency repairs, or a psychologist with some tips on how to get through all this, give FIONA WEST a call on 0432 648 558 or email her on fiona.west@fremantleherald.com

HISTORY is in the making and the Museum of Perth wants to document it as it happens.

The museum has temporarily closed its doors because of the Coronavirus pandemic, but during the downtime has invited submissions of photos, videos, audio and stories for a digital archive of life in the time of coronavirus.

So far there’ve been images of cafe owners mourning the closure of their business, cruise ships in limbo off the coast of Cottesloe, and CBD streets emptied of their usual bustle.

Museum director Reece Harley says “these are truly historic times, worth documenting for future generations.

“The next few months will be testing for most of us as we each adjust to a new way of life and find ways to manage the changes. Stories of heartbreak, hope and resilience will be commonplace.”

“We hope this important archive will form the basis of a future exhibition,” and down the road they museum will look at partnering with other groups around the world collecting similar media.  

Submit to museumofperth.com.au/covid19

by DAVID BELL

A CRUEL con targeting people desperate for groceries was being spread in suburban Facebook groups this week.

The fake “One Year of Free Groceries” competition has swiped IGA’s brand name, though it’s been around a few years in various guises and using a variety of store names.

The fake-IGA version looks to have been wildly successful as the shelves in bigger supermarkets have become patchy, luring people in with images of packed grocery boxes. 

The fake “IGA Club” page was getting about 5000 people signing up each day. Many were sharing the competition in the hope of improving their chances to win either a year’s free groceries or a $100 voucher.

The comments were full of hopeful folk praying they’d win; pensioners said they were doing it tough and the groceries “would be a life saver” or “so very helpful for my family”.

“That would change my life,” another said.

“I need one for my mum.

“This would be wonderful as the 7th is my birthday and with social distancing it looks like a rather ordinary day.”

The offer seemed too good to be true so we reverse image-searched the bountiful grocery box images on Google, and found they’d recently been used by scammers in New Zealand with a near identical set up, only for their local chain “New World” instead of IGA.

The website’s identifying data has been hidden, but they’re running the scams all over the world, localising it with popular shop names in Norway, Germany, Canada and the US. 

The image of the tempting groceries was originally from a 2014 story about a charity food bank in West Somerset.

When people click “sign up” to enter they’re taken to a sham website. Some versions infect the victim’s computer with viruses that can either steal bank details or shut down the computer for a ransom fee. Other versions just tell punters they’ve won, and can get their prize if they transfer a small fee. Other versions use information you enter for identify theft, and the least malicious versions simply acrue a bunch of likes on a Facebook page and then sell that to a shady business who changes the name.

The Voice tried to contact the page owners but got no response. We got in touch with the Consumer Protection Department whose ScamNet team have organised to get the page taken down, “after identifying that it did not have any affiliation to IGA and  was indeed a ‘pharming’ or ‘harvesting’ scam”. 

IGA’s national PR rep Heather Howell says “it is terrible that in such times there are people willing to take advantage of others”. She says IGA had also been working with Facebook to have it taken down.

“WRITE it down,” Highgate resident Sally Lake is imploring people living through uncertainty and fear in the era of Covid-19.

The former Vincent councillor is encouraging everyone to keep a “journal of the pandemic” to record feelings, observations and experiences.

Ms Lake decided to start writing when the weight of sad news became too hard to bear, having got the idea from a book she recently read about a UK woman’s experience during World War II.

In 1937 a “mass observation” trend took off in England, with a poet, an anthropologist and a polymath encouraging people to keep a daily diary to record things that would otherwise never make it to the official archives. People wrote about their private lives, personal grooming, bathroom habits, and even slang and gestures of the day. The diaries became a valuable record of everyday life, especially during WWII, when the official records were filled with Churchillian self-promotion and skewed by propaganda.

Ms Lake says social media has been great for keeping in touch with people while staying at home, but “what we put on social media is often edited” and a personal diary can be more honest.

Along with the sadness of illness, death, and people struggling and losing jobs, Ms Lake will be documenting the positive side of the Covid-19 era: “There’s lovely things happening… I just went out the front and sat on the steps with a cup of tea, and I realised that everyone in our row of terraces happened to be on their verandahs. That aspect is really nice.”

Ms Lake has decided to backdate her diary to the day of the Highway to Hell event on March 1, the first day coronavirus had an impact on her behaviour. With the news reports telling of situations worsening overseas, and mass gatherings being identified as a major source of outbreaks, she and partner Dudley Maier wondered whether they should even go.

They decided they would, and just try to keep their distance from people.

“That’s the first day I refused to shake someone’s hand,” she recalls. 

Some people might want to keep their diaries private forever, but Ms Lake hopes many will be keen to submit them to an archive as a record of these days.

Ms Lake has set up a facebook page for tips, mutual support, and more information about the mass observation concept at facebook. com/journalsofthepandemic

HOMELESS people most at risk from Coronavirus will stay at the Pan Pacific Perth under a “Hotels With Heart” program.

The WA government is funding the trial and the hotel has given them a steep discount on the bill (about half what they’d make 

if the rooms were populated 

by conference attendees who’d otherwise be in town).

Communicable diseases often spread rapidly through homeless populations due to group living condition and being unable to isolate: US numbers show they’re 20 times more likely to have tuberculosis than homed people.

Pan Pacific Hotels Group managing director Rob Weeden said he’d been wanting to do something to help homeless folk for a while, saying “some of the solutions of ‘just get rid of them’ don’t wash with me”. 

Midway through last week he put the feelers out to a few contacts, saying “I can help people now, let’s set up a program”.

He says with Ruah, the Department of Communities, Anglicare and Uniting Care West they were able to put the program together.

While praising social workers as the real “heroes” of the fight against Coronavirus, Mr Weedon said he was incredibly proud of how staff had accepted their new guests.

“I’ve got staff saying ‘I want to do lunch for the VIPs today, I want to do dinner for them’.” 

“They’re funny, they’re quirky, they’re grateful,” he says of the hotel’s new guests.

“I get choked up when I talk about it.

“They’re just happy to be safe, they’re happy they’re not out on the streets.”

The hotel also has some people in self-isolation after flying back from overseas or interstate, and Mr Weeden says 95 per cent of the travellers and 100 per cent of the homeless guests have been great.

Communities has referred the first 20 or so guests based on who’s most vulnerable, accounting for age and secondary illnesses.

Mr Weeden says he’s happy to have more: “We’ve got capacity for up to 120. The key thing is we’re not fairweather friends; we’ve gone into this eyes wide open and we’ve committed to doing this for six months.”

He says he hopes it’ll help people get back on their feet and find long-term housing, and says he’d love to employ a couple. The theory behind the WA governments’ interim homelessness plan is that stable accommodation often acts as a circuit-breaker and gives people a path to employment and housing, since it’s hard to plan for those when surviving day-to-day.  

He says state Perth Labor MP John Carey needs some kudos for helping to get it sorted (and for being an open ear to his various grumbles over the years about what Adelaide Terrace needs to turn it from an “Old Kent Road” to a Mayfair).

Mr Carey says “this is incredible positive leadership by Pan Pacific.

“We’ve seen a lot of bad stuff about hoarding in supermakerts, and I’ve personally been shocked by the behaviour of some younger citizens who’ve still been in groups… but this shows us the best in humanity.”

‘A start’

The Hotels with Heart trial has been welcomed by ShelterWA but they’re calling for more action by governments to get everyone off the streets.

CEO Michelle Mackenzie put out a statement saying the trial was “fantastic” but “we need to get people off the streets now.

“Over 9,000 Western Australians have no place to call home and 1,000 are rough sleepers. Official advice is to stay home and self-isolate, however this is simply impossible. We need additional solutions for homelessness and housing services across WA.”

by DAVID BELL