Perth Voice Interactive

LEEDERVILLE has joined the ‘Jane’s Walk’ movement.

The neighbourhood walking tours are named after late urban activist Jane Jacobs, who advocated people-first, city planning.

Local volunteer town team, Leederville Connect, is hosting the free walks and held the inaugural stroll on November 25.

Ms Jacobs died in 2006 and the first Jane’s Walk was held the following year in Toronto in tribute. The tradition soon spread across the globe.

Usually Jane’s Walks take place in early May around her birthday, but LC opted for a southern-hemisphere weather-friendly version.

Tour guide David Galloway says “it’s a way to enjoy the start of summer with other local people, talk about what makes our town great, and hear stories about the history of Leederville and plans for its future.”

The next walk is Sunday December 16 from the Oxford Street Reserve at 11am.

It’s free but register at facebook.com/Leedervilleconnect, where there’s info about other upcoming walks.

THERE will be more Aboriginal tourist attractions in Kings Park under a new government plan to entice more overseas and interstate visitors to Perth.

The plan will see the WA Tourism Commission collaborate with the Rottnest Island Authority, the Botanic Gardens and Parks Authority and Perth Zoo.

The state government has called for Aboriginal tourism operators to submit expressions of interest for attractions in Kings Park and Rottnest.

Premier Mark McGowan said Aboriginal culture was an important part of the local tourism industry.

“If we can harness it and make sure it’s appropriately promoted…it’ll enhance job opportunities, particularly for Aboriginal Western Australians,” he said.

Mr McGowan added that the initiative would promote growth and respect between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people in WA.

Nurture

“We have to continue to consider and nurture Aboriginal people and their ancient culture that has existed in this land for many years. [It is] an important part of understanding where we come from.”

More than 700,000 people visit Rottnest each year, but there isn’t any Aboriginal cultural experiences at the island.

Rotto’s Aboriginal heritage officer, Ezra Jacobs-Smith, believes an Aboriginal tour would let tourists engage “in a meaningful and genuine way” with the island’s dark colonial past.

“It would be a great thing for everybody involved,” he said. “It would be a great thing for the government, it would be a great thing for the Aboriginal community and the non-Aboriginal community as well.

“There’s been a bit of a push for Aboriginal people to set up tourism businesses on the island.”

The call for tour operators is part of the government’s Aboriginal Tourism Action Plan, which has not been released yet, leaving WA with no Aboriginal tourism policy heading into 2019.

Expressions of interest for the Kings Park attraction close on January 14.

by SEAN HILL

TO get you in the Christmas spirit, there’s a stocking-full of events and activities around Voiceland.

St Patrick’s Mt Lawley kicks it off with the return of the Mt Lawley Christmas Festival tomorrow, Sunday December 9.

There’s an array of Christmas festivities along Beaufort Street with a visit from Santa, kids’ activities, artisan stalls, local food vendors, live entertainment and then Carols by Candlelight at dusk and turning on the lights of the Mt Lawley Christmas Tree.

It all runs 3 – 9pm on the corner of Beaufort and First Ave.

The Perth Folk and Roots Club is throwing a ripper Christmas Show at the Inglewood Bowling and Sports Club on Saturday December 15 from 5 – 8pm.

It’ll be a free evening of Americana folk with a touch of acoustic jazz with Kerry B Ryan and new four-piece Danse Macabre.

Santa’s at the Inglewood library on Wednesday December 19 and the Dianella library on Thursday December 20 at 10.30am, with a magical elf friend, for some songs and stories. Make sure you book at eventbrite.com.au

Youth With a Mission are on a mission to fill Hyde Park with kids on Friday December 14 from 5.30pm. There’s lots of activities, culminating with Carols by Candlelight starting at 6.30pm. It’s free entry, but seeing as YWAM are a good lot doing great things for youngsters, a gold coin donation would be a good way to show your appreciation.

The Beaufort Street Christmas Festival is a six-day tinsel binge along one of Perth’s favourite shopping and entertainment strips.

From Sunday December 16 to Friday December 21 a new Christmas window display will be unveiled each night, accompanied by carollers. A great opportunity to knock off the Christmas shopping and support local traders at the same time.

The Voice senses the Ghost of Mayors Past had a hand in the Santa Paws Christmas Pooch Photos at the Mary Street Piazza, where local doggies can catch a snap with Santa on Wednesday December 19 from 6.30pm. If we don’t see Chewy or Solo we’ll eat our elf hats.

It all concludes with the Beaufort Street Christmas Parade and twilight markets on Saturday December 22 from 6.30pm. There’s camels, donkeys, school groups and the Salvation Army Band parading from the Mary Street Piazza to St Alban’s Anglican Church, where you can grab last-minute gifts from the markets.

Down in Perth city you can follow the Christmas Lights Trail from Santa’s Magical Castle in the James Street mall through to the giant illuminated roos outside Council House on St George’s Terrace.

Find all nine of Santa’s reindeer lost in the giant Christmas Maze at Elizabeth Quay from 10am-3pm on weekends or 2 – 7pm on weekdays and you’ll go in the draw for a special Christmas prize. Santa will also be around on Fridays from 4pm and on the weekend from noon to 3pm.

New Christmas Markets are being held on December 8 and 15 at Cathedral Square from noon to 7pm, with fresh produce, gourmet delights and hand-crafted gifts.

The Christmas Symphony on December 15 at Langley Park in East Perth from 7.30pm is Perth’s largest classical music concert, and this year for the first time will be whimsical and nostalgic Christmas carols.

The Christmas Nativity brings to life the story of Jesus’s birth with hundreds of performers and live animals in the stunning surrounds of the Supreme Court Gardens on December 19 – 21 from 6.30 – 10pm.

Woolies profits as A Current Affair stokes racism

A Voice Exclusive investigation

A BIT of dodgy tabloid journalism by one of Australia’s flagship current affairs programs has led to Chinese-Australians being unfairly demonised and subjected to racist attacks.

Viewers of Channel 9’s A Current Affair would be well familiar with its stories about Asian shoppers stripping supermarket shelves of baby infant formula – the show’s producers whip it out with regular monotony.

Frenzy

In the last 18 months ACA has broadcast “A Formula Crisis”, “Baby Formula Frenzy”, “Baby Formula Hero”, “Baby Formula Win” and “Formula Scramble”, all along the same theme.

“We’ve seen the empty shelves and the trolleys piled high at the checkout, but the baby formula trade is now in overdrive,” reads the show’s veteran anchor Tracy Grimshaw in Baby Formula Frenzy.

“We’ve found suburban homes used as powdered-milk warehouses, leaving mothers with hungry babies angry.”

But ACA fails to mention in any of its stories that the biggest suppliers of Australian infant formula to the Chinese market – and by a very large margin – are the Australian-owned supermarket giant Woolworths and pharmacy retailer Chemist Warehouse.

Those sales were worth millions of dollars to the big Australians and would surely have dented their ability to fill local shelves, so how did A Current Affair miss this important detail?

Perhaps it’s because Woolworths is one of Channel 9’s biggest advertisers.

In fact, a cynic might wonder whether ACA is running a protection racket for Woolies: It’s last story on the issue “Formula Crisis” aired in late October, a fortnight before China’s AU$61 billion “Singles Day” and just as Woolies would have been holding back stock from local shelves in preparation for that extraordinary one-day shop-a-thon.

Limit

In fact, Woolies gave ACA a “statement” to accompany the story which noted it had just reintroduced a two-tin limit per customer following a review “with our key suppliers” and would monitor on-shelf availability.

Nowhere in Woolies’ statement did it note its own involvement in the Chinese market.

Perth mum Amanda (Ying Fei) Chen, who’s daughter attends a Bibra Lake primary school, has been selling formula to friends and clients in China through Facebook and the Chinese equivalent WeChat since 2015.

Her first sale was just two tins of formula, but now her annual turnover is around $500,000.

Ms Chen says A Current Affair’s one-sided reporting has left her being targeted nearly every time she buys formula.

“Everyone hates the Chinese shopper and people look at you like you’re are going to steal the formula,” Ms Chen told the Herald.

“At one stage I was nearly attacked by a teen, but I just asked them to calm down.”

Just last week she was verbally attacked by a manager at Woolworths in Cockburn who threatened to have her turfed out by security guards, even though she’s breaking no law.

In fact, she was given the green light by the Australian Taxation Office which went over her business with a fine-toothed comb when she registered to become one of the first Australian exporters to the Daigou market.

Daigou is a huge trade system where overseas buyers act as agents for Chinese consumers for goods they’d be unable to access or afford at home.

“It was a new one for the ATO, so they had to decide how to deal with it,” she says.

“They should be proud of the market we opened, not kicking us out.

“This should be a good news story – this great opportunity for Australian businesses that have been opened up.

‘Deplorable’

“Since last year, the company that makes A2 has tripled its output.”

Ms Chen says she’s regularly been told to “go back where you come from” and says other Australian-Chinese friends have experienced racial taunts.

That caught the attention of WA’s acting commissioner for equal opportunity John Byrne who called the behaviour “deplorable and not consistent with our harmonious multicultural society in Australia”.

“If a person is subjected to racial slurs in public outside the areas of work, accommodation or education in Western Australia, it is considered racial vilification which must be dealt with under the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 through the Australian Human Rights Commission,” Dr Byrne told the Voice.

The commission itself operates under WA’s 1984 Equal Opportunity Act, which limits him to dealing with complaints about racism in the workplace, accommodation or education institutions.

“It is unlawful under the Equal Opportunity Act 1984 in Western Australia to refuse someone goods and services because of their race, or to give them less favourable while receiving goods and services based on their race,” Dr Byrne said.

Chinese demand for overseas infant formula was sparked by a 2008 scandal where local milk products were adulterated with the chemical melamine, leading to the deaths of six babies and the hospitalisation of another 54,000. Dozens of companies were implicated and desperate parents were prepared to pay huge prices for clean overseas products.

Daigou

Chinese visitors to Australia and crews from Chinese merchant ships soon cottoned on to a potential market and stocked up before heading home, while shortly after the online Daigou market took hold.

Ms Chen said it was easy to see why Chinese parents were so keen on the Australian products.

“There used to be a single child policy in China, so you had to treat your child like a princess.

“In China it’s always grey; it used to be paradise but now you never see blue sky and there’s always pollution, so when the Chinese mummy sees the blue skies and beaches of Australia, she believes it will be clean.”

The interest did lead to some local shortages and supermarkets imposed limits, but by 2016 the market was still growing and Woolworths decided it was time to tap in.

It launched its own Chinese site on Tmall, a Chinese-language retail website with over 500 million monthly active users.

On its home page, three of the six featured products are infant milk formula.

There are no restrictions on how many consumers can purchase.

Another benefit for Woolies, Chemist Warehouse and formula manufacturers to come from A Current Affair’s stories is that it helps get around a self-regulated restriction on advertising infant formula, which the industry adopted under pressure from the government over fears they would undermine breast feeding rates. Editorial stories, even ones ramping up fears of shortages, wouldn’t be covered under the code.

When the Chook contacted A Current Affair to get its side of the story, we had a comedic encounter worthy of the program itself.

After getting through to the production team and explaining we were looking for someone to comment, we were put on hold while, apparently, reporter Laura Turner was rustled up.

But something suddenly went wrong with the hold and it became clear no one was looking for Ms Turner: “Bloody idiots! Everyone knows [Woolies] sell online, but it’s not the same as stripping the shelves,” whined the staffer with a thick Strine accent.

“I might just tell them to send her an email…” she said before the line became to crackly to hear.

After discovering she’d inadvertently admitted ACA had deliberately withheld that information, the staffer asked us to email one of the producers with our questions.

She refused to provide her name and we never heard back from the producer.

But, armed with her comments, we took to the streets of Freo to find out if viewers really were aware of Woolies’ involvement, or whether the anti-Chinese message was too strong.

The results of our mini survey were no surprise; no one knew about Woolies, and about half volunteered that ACA hadn’t much credibility in the first place.

by STEVE GRANT

BAYSWATER’S mission to become a hip suburb continued last weekend when council unveiled the first “parklet” in the town centre.

By transforming on-street parking bays into a community space for the public, parklets have become a popular feature in cities like Vincent and Fremantle.

Baysy’s first parklet is outside the .tbsp café on King William Street, and was jointly funded by the council and the cafe.

“The community told us that parklets were something they wanted see as a way to activate the street, so I’m thrilled that we have been able to work with local businesses to make this happen,” said Bayswater mayor Dan Bull

“I would like to thank the team at .tbsp for working with the city on this exciting project that will help activate King William Street and encourage people to stay longer.

“Planter boxes built by Bayswater Men’s Shed are also being installed and will be filled with waterwise native plants, giving the street a lift before the busy holiday season.”

BAYSWATER is the first metropolitan council to let the community have a say on how its entire budget should be spent.

Until January 31 residents can use an online budget tool to recommend how much is spent on different city services.

A community panel will be formed to look at residents’ changes, and the panel will then make recommendations to council which has the final say on the 2019/20 budget.

“This is the first time a metropolitan council has laid its entire operating budget out for the community to view and recommend changes,” said Bayswater mayor Dan Bull.

“It makes perfect sense that ratepayers should be offered a say in how their rates are spent.”

To use the budget tool or apply to be on the community panel, go to engage.bayswater.wa.gov.au