Perth Voice Interactive

A NORTHBRIDGE restaurateur had to walk his bride down the aisle of Perth’s distinctly unromantic immigration detention centre a fortnight ago after she was detained for what the couple claims is a misunderstanding over her visa.

Jeremy Lay, who owns the Asian restaurant Buda Buda on Francis Street, met Sirilak Laksom during a trip to Thailand in 2017.

Love blossomed, and over the next two years Ms Laksom visited Australia to stay with her new beau, occasionally helping out at Buda Buda with orders and bookings. In January this year Mr Lay’s family accompanied him to Thailand to help the couple celebrate their engagement.

Airport

But when Ms Laksom tried to get back to Perth shortly after the party, she was stopped at the airport and interviewed by an Australian Border Force officer. He noted down that Ms Laksom claimed she’d worked at Buda Buda six days a week, which would be in contravention of her no-work visitor’s visa.

Ms Laksom was immediately sent to detention, but says she was misunderstood.

“While at my partner’s restaurant, I would eat, talk to my partner and talk casually with customers and occasionally take food orders or bookings if my partner was otherwise indisposed,” Ms Laksom said in a statutory declaration prepared for an appeal to immigration minister David Coleman.

“These interactions with customers were rare and certainly could not be considered work, even in the casual sense. Had I not been there, there was no requirement to replace me with a paid employee as my actions were so minimal and infrequent.

“I only attended the venue to spend time with my partner and develop our relationships as he works long hours, six days a week and we were intending to be married.”

Mr Lay said his bride did not drive and knew few people in Perth, so it was better to be at his restaurant than lonely at home.

Solicitor and migration agent Lily Chen, a current Perth city councillor, took on the couple’s case pro bono.

While the blue pin-up board in the immigration centre isn’t quite the background the couple were planning for a wedding photo, Ms Chen says the ceremony meant they could now apply for an offshore partner visa.

But without intervention from the minister, Ms  Laksom will have to fly back to Bangkok and wait almost two years for the immigration department to process the paperwork. She’s also facing a three-year ban from getting another visitor’s visa, meaning the couple will have little opportunity to spend time together in the interim.

Ms Chen says she’s asked Mr Coleman to step in on compassionate grounds.

In a letter to the minister she cited the headline-making “au pair” case of 2015 when former immigration minister Peter Dutton stepped in to stop the deportation of a 27-year-old French woman suspected of working for AFL boss Gillon McLachlan.

At the time Mr Dutton claimed his intervention was a “discretionary and humanitarian act” in the “interests of Australia as a humane and generous society”.

Ms Chen says Mr Lay has become very depressed while worrying about his wife’s wellbeing and mental health in detention.

The minister’s office and Department of Home Affairs said they do not comment on “individual cases”.

by DAVID BELL

VINCENT council is scrambling to try and recover thousands of staff emails which have been deleted in contravention of the State Records Act.

The gaping flaw in Vincent’s record keeping came to light four weeks ago and has been the subject of an internal investigation, says the council’s director of corporate services Kerryn Batten.

In an extraordinary admission to councillors at the last meeting, Ms Batten said only the disobedience of a staff member had prevented the loss from being even worse.

“We were fortunate that in the last couple of years one of our employees has taken it on himself to try to store some of the records despite being asked to delete them,” Ms Batten said.

The city wouldn’t provide clarification on who’d ordered the destruction or why they’d issued the directive.

Ms Batten said the situation arose because managers at the council hadn’t been checking whether email accounts were archived when staff left the organisation. Instead, it had been standard practice just to delete the accounts.

“At the moment, going back further than two years, it’s unlikely that we’ve kept records in compliance with the State Records Act.”

New CEO David MacLennon has been left to try and fix the mess.

“The city is conducting an investigation on whether these emails are recoverable from the city’s back-up and other servers,” Mr MacLennon said.

“It appears that the deletion of records was generally in good faith based on the city’s record-keeping plan.”

Three weeks ago the city’s audit committee called for new, more stringent controls over the handling of records.

The stuff-up could play havoc with Freedom of Information requests.

FOI requests have previously revealed how former CEO Len Kosova froze out a community organisation in retribution for one of its members, former councillor Dudley Maier, criticism of the council.

In Perth council, emails also exposed lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi’s troubling reactions to staff who referred on criticisms about a dingy hostel operating from a building she owns in the CEO.

by DAVID BELL

THE Greens’ Perth candidate has urged school kids to attend a climate change “strike” on Friday, despite the WA government warning parents they must legally be in class.

Ms Perks says the School Strike for Climate on Friday coincides with her birthday, and “there’s nowhere I’d rather be”.

“Growing up in the Perth Hills, bushfires were a very real threat. Recently, I saw the first-hand devastation of the increasing intensity of bushfires due to drying climate conditions,” Ms Perks said.

“The Parkerville bushfire was what locals had always feared.”

Wildlife

Ms Perks said volunteers bravely put their lives on the line to protect other people’s homes, even while their own were being razed. Wildlife and the local environment were also devastated.

“This hit me hard, and if I wasn’t determined enough before to fight for climate action, I was newly resolved to do everything that I could.”

Mr Perks has eight years’ experience in climate change policy development, but says she’s been involved in the issue longer and laments a lack of political will.

She believes that’s down to big donations to the major parties from miners and big resource companies, which the Greens want banned.

“Since 2012 — two years before the carbon price legislation was repealed — the Liberal and Labor parties have taken over $100 million from big corporations, and $5.9m specifically from big resource companies,” she says.

“In exchange for these donations, it seems that the fossil fuel industry don’t have to pay for their increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

“They also get subsidies! National tax-based subsidies that encourage fossil fuel production and consumption that add up to $12 billion every year.

In recent weeks the WA Labor government’s “jobs first” campaign has seen premier Mark McGowan reject the Environmental Protection Agency’s call to make big new resource projects carbon neutral by paying offsets for carbon emissions. “We have had some feedback from some of the major investors that it could impact future projects, and of course I have to create jobs and that is my number one priority,” he told the ABC.

by DAVID BELL

BAYSWATER locals have raised a stink over their council’s approval of a public toilet at the Seventh Avenue bridge in Maylands.

Last month the council voted to move an $85,000 public artwork created out of jarrah sleepers from the original 1913 Seventh Avenue bridge to make way for the new dunny.

But the Maylands Ratepayers and Residents’ Association has criticised the lack of consultation and wants the decision rescinded.

MRRA member Dominic Cascuna says most people only found out where the council wanted to put the toilet on the morning of the council vote.

“There wasn’t enough consultation done and it could cost up to $15,000 to move the artwork,” he says.

Isolated

Locals took to the MRRA Facebook page to express their concerns:

• “What is the strategy to locate it there? I would like to see it closer to the busy part of Eighth Ave or beside the train station. If a little kid wants to go to the toilet, or a person with a disability it’s a long walk; and in my experience kids can’t hold on to walk down there. It’s quite isolated and away from cafes, etc,” posted David Dyke.

• “…already enough trouble in the area from the local degenerates, this will just make things worse. Anyone using 8th Avenue strip will never walk up to the bridge so what’s the point. I’m sure some of these planners would never allow this near their homes,” posted Jamie Wright.

Last week Bruce Havila, who is redeveloping the nearby Maylands post office on Whatley Crescent into a wine bar, said he wasn’t happy about having a public convenience near his new business.

Maylands local Jan Wheare says the commemorative bridge artwork, installed in 2015 when the new $9.3 million Seventh Avenue Bridge was opened, should stay put.

“To replace it with a toilet block seems an insult to the history it represents,” she says.

“It will be virtually hidden in the area on the other side.”

Ms Wheare noted it would be dangerous viewing the sculpture at the busy Railway Parade intersection, which will get even busier if the proposed closure of the Caledonian crossing goes ahead.

There’s no outhouse within 350m of the Maylands train station and locals have been complaining for nearly a decade about people peeing and defecating there.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

A RESIDENT campaign against proposed changes to the intersection of Carrington Street and Second Avenue in Mt Lawley got a fillip from a Perth rich-lister this week.

Pharmacist turned multi-millionaire property mogul Con Berbatis, who lives on First Avenue, has commissioned a traffic study into mini-roundabouts and hired a PR consultant to convince Stirling council to drop its plans to allow only left-hand turns at the intersection (“Taking a turn for the worse,” Voice, March 2, 2019).

Dr Berbatis has also joined forces with real estate agent Jan Wilkie to organise a public meeting today (Saturday March 16) at 4pm in Copley Park, and the pair reckons there’s enough anger in the community to guarantee a big turn-out.

Dr Berbatis says he’s peeved because council officers appeared to have ignored regular accidents and flattened traffic signs on the intersection of Carrington and First and believes the proposed changes will just make his street worse.

He says there’s been inadequate consultation and a comprehensive study is long over-due into traffic in the suburb bounded by Walcott Street, Central Avenue, Railway Parade and Beaufort Street.

“We are a neglected suburb by the City of Stirling and this time we are united in fighting,” Dr Berbatis said.

Ms Wilkie told the Voice they’ve got a 50-strong petition calling for the broad traffic study, as well as the installation of a second stop sign and small traffic island at the contested intersection.

But Stirling’s infrastructure director Michael Littleton says all crashes at the intersection involved vehicles turning right or travelling straight through, so the only feasible treatment was to block the intersection so only left-hand turns are possible.

“A roundabout was found not to be feasible for a number of reasons,” Mr Littleton said.

“A roundabout could not be accommodated within the existing road reserve and still have the minimum required space behind the kerb for footpaths and underground services without the need to encroach into adjacent private properties.”

Mr Littleton said the council had looked into speed humps, plateaux, and raised intersections, but the Mt Lawley Society opposed them in heritage areas.

by STEVE GRANT

• Road safety minister Michelle Roberts, Perth MP John Carey, Vincent mayor Emma Cole and her kids on Mary Street in Mount Lawley.

ALL residential streets in the southern half of Vincent will have a 40kmh speed limit as part of a two-year trial starting April 29.

It’ll affect most local roads south of Vincent Street. Larger roads like Beaufort, Fitzgerald and Charles Streets will stay at their current speed limit (mostly 60kmh), as will most of Vincent Street, except for the small section near Hyde Park’s water playground.

A total of 392 people commented on the proposal last year, with 57 per cent in favour of the 40kmh trial and another 16 per cent calling for a 30kmh limit.

WA road safety minister Michelle Roberts is supportive of the trial and thinks it will be adopted by other councils.

Children

“This is all about making neighbourhood streets safer for all road users including cyclists, pedestrians, the elderly and children,” she says.

“It’s also about making our inner city streets better places to live.

“We know that dropping 10kmh off a speed limit makes a big difference to the stopping distance of a vehicle.

“It can be the difference between life and death for a cyclist or pedestrian, or between hospitalisation or walking away.”

Vincent mayor Emma Cole says “residents regularly tell me that they are concerned about the speed of traffic and their desire to bring back a neighbourhood feel to the streets where they live. More and more, I hear that 50 is just too fast for our residential roads”.

She says “we hope this trial demonstrates safer, more welcoming streets, where people are more likely to ride and walk, and kids feel safe playing outdoors”.

Ms Cole says research has shown that lower speed limits also reduce greenhouse gases and only have a minor impact on travel times, and “we’d like to put that research to the test and see if lowered speeds can have a similar impact in Vincent”.

They have a suite of state government agencies on board to oversee the trial, including the police, Road Safety Commission and Main Roads.

Push already on to go lower

SPEED limits should be dropped to 30kmh to save more lives, according to advocacy group Streets for People.

The group recently formed to push for more “people-focused” streets that make walking and bike riding easier and better connect and communities.

SFP board member Tim Judd says “current research shows that 30kmh speed limits on local roads can improve the safety and pedestrian amenity on local suburban roads”.

He points to figures showing a “marked reduction in surviving a crash as traffic speeds increase to 40kmh and 50kmh limits.”

Mr Judd says a 30kmh limit “means we can return roads back to streets to be enjoyed by the people who play and live there”.

He acknowledges that one of the complaints people have about lower speeds is a concern it’ll impact travel times, but he says “research demonstrates that having a network of local suburban neighbourhood streets at 30kmh has minimal effect on journey times but a significant improvement in road safety and pedestrian amenity”.

SFP chair Shannon Savage adds: “Slower speeds on residential streets make the streets safer for all road users, including people in cars. It does not significantly impact on overall journey time; most residences are within 500m of a larger road that would have a speed limit of 50 or 60kmh.”

by DAVID BELL

DINERS could soon be able to enjoy a tipple in parklets across Vincent.

Under council rules, liquor has been prohibited in the little sitting areas that have popped up in car bays throughout Leederville and other town centres.

There’s rarely anyone in the one on Newcastle Street near Pinchos, as Spanish wine, sangria and cerveza are so integral to the tapas experience.

Pinchos and another nearby licenced venue Jus Burgers, are calling on Vincent council to change the rules so people can have an alcoholic drink with their meal in their parklets.

Both businesses built their own parklets, while others were installed by the council.

The final approval rests with the state liquor department, but Vincent councillors voted to give Pinchos and Jus Burgers temporary support and are now planning to remove the liquor-ban policy permanently, after 21 days’ public comment.

Mayor Emma Cole said the parklets should reflect the business that hosts them.

“And in the case of a small tapas bar…when you’re having your patatas bravas, surely that glass of wine is a normal thing to have,” Ms Cole said.

“I see people sitting everywhere at Pinchos – except in the parklet.”

Ms Cole said the council had the power to rescind the licences if there were any problems. Cr Ros Harley said the risk was low because the venues already have liquor licences and staff trained in the responsible service of alcohol

“I think it will add to the overall activity of the street and dare I say, vibrancy,” Cr Harley said.

by DAVID BELL

DON’T eat fish, crabs or other shellfish collected from the Swan River between the old Swan Road Brewery and Garratt Road Bridge.

An algal bloom is plaguing the river and the Department of Health says recent testing has confirmed high levels of potentially toxic microscopic algae, which can produce “paralytic shellfish poisoning”.

Cooking won’t kill the toxins and symptoms include tingling and numb lips, prickly fingers and toes, nausea, vomiting, impaired balance, dizziness, slurred speech, double vision, weakness, difficulty in swallowing or breathing, and diarrhoea. In severe cases it causes muscular paralysis.

Potentially affected shellfish include oysters, mussels, clams, pipis, scallops, cockles and razor clams.

The health department’s Michael Lindsay says farmed shellfish are okay as commercial operators have strict quality assurance testing, and “other recreational activities including swimming, skiing and boating are not likely to be affected by this micro-algae species, but as a general rule swimming should be avoided in areas of discoloured water”.

The department is putting up health warning signs at key fishing spots along the river.

It’s not known how long the bloom will linger. The department puts the current bloom down to the right mix of temperature, salinity, calm water, low rainfall and too many nutrients.