Perth Voice Interactive

ONE of Perth’s only CBD gallery spaces for emerging artists is facing homelessness, with its landlord reportedly seeking a more lucrative tenant.

Moana Project Space has been giving edgy artists and curators a rare outing since taking out a sub-lease on Moana Chambers in the Hay Street Mall in 2012.

But a cafe which operated in the space next door recently closed, and the owners of the building are banking on a larger space being more attractive in the market.

Moana co-director Jess Boyce says while the closure is “unfortunate”, they have already been contacted by several building owners and other organisations and she’s confident they’ll have new digs, hopefully in the CBD, before too long.

Ms Boyce and fellow co-director Matthew Siddall say the short notice from the landlord couldn’t have come at a worse time; both were in Tasmania working on an exhibition and had to leave half their team to pack up while they rushed back to Perth to get ready for Moana’s bump out.

They had been hoping to bring the Tassie exhibition to Perth, and say they may even look at temporary gallery spaces until they’ve firmed up a new home.

The announcement has also meant artist Tom Blake’s exhibition, Downstream Dreams, will be cut short. It opens this Friday 6pm and will continue through the weekend. It had originally been booked in until December 9. Blake’s multi-genre work uses fragmented moments and symbols to explore the psychological frameworks and technological networks surrounding us.

BAYSWATER councillors have voted against giving themselves a pay cut.

Cr Brent Fleeton says in tough economic times councillors should look at cutting their own pay packets, but not reduce it to the pre-1995 era when they hardly got any allowances.

“With the budget as it is, with rate increases as they are, and council laying off staff, I think councillors can afford a haircut in the wages department,” he says.

“If the fee drops to $25,000 a year it shows the city staff, ratepayers, everyone, that we’re serious.”

Councillors currently receive $31,364 annually.

Cr Fleeton tabled a motion this week suggesting a review which looks beyond just pay cuts. Cr Fleeton wants staff to investigate:

• whether the city could get by with fewer councillors; and,

• direct elections of the mayor (rather than councillors choosing from among themselves), and;

Mates

Cr Fleeton says letting the people elect a mayor means you won’t have councillors trying to get mates on council just to get themselves a vote for mayor. He says that’s happened at Bayswater, but noted current mayor Dan Bull didn’t do that.

“I don’t think Dan had to,” says Cr Fleeton. “I’m stoked for him to be mayor—he’s very good.”

Cr Fleeton’s motion was defeated and he only received support from councillors Catherine Ehrhardt and Giorgia Johnson during the vote.

by DAVID BELL

FOR 40 years Perth community radio station RTRFM has helped local artists and songwriters get their music out into the world.

Some musos have hit it big after being played on the station, and they’re getting a bunch of them back together for a 40th anniversary shindig.

Caitlin Nienaber has presented the breakfast show at RTR for the last three years and been involved on and off there since 2009.

“I think most musicians who are making original music in Perth have had an association with us over the past four decades,” she says.

“It’s great to see people like Methyl Ethel and Tame Impala have crazy worldwide global success, and know that they started here, they got their first radio play here.

“I knew Abby May [who’ll be playing at the 40th] and her music before I started listening to the station.

“It’s been one of the coolest things to see her evolution as an artist over the past 10 years, the albums she’s released and the journey she’s been on, and it’s watching artists grow and find themselves that is really special.”

Ms Nienaber says “it’s still a real thrill seeing a band post on social media: ‘I heard my song for the first time ever on the radio today’, or when I hear that anecdotally from people.

“You see that effect of what RTRFM can really do for young creative people, to really legitimise that process of sitting in your room and having ideas and feelings and putting it into something creative.”

RTR general manager Stu McLeod—whose band Eskimo Joe got their first airplay on the station—says The Big 40 is not just about looking back.

“It’s a way for us to showcase the last 40 years and the next 40 years at the same time, with the finest artists from our past and present, performing alongside each other and creating unique performances together that you simply will never find anywhere else,” he says.

A WA supergroup called the Slightly Oddway Orchestra, has been put together for the show, and members of Childsaint, Rag N’ Bone, The Love Junkies, Grievous Bodily Calm, PUCK, The Chlorines, Kitchen People, Jacob Diamond, Bells Rapids, Carla Geneve and Dream Rimmy, will perform cover versions of WA songs written in 2017. The night will end with A Musical History, a voyage through the station’s past by Adam Trainer, Davey Craddock, Steven Aaron Hughes and Timothy Nelson, with the team presenting audio, video and photos from the station’s archives.

The Big 40 is on this Sunday, November 19, 3pm to 10pm, at Perth Concern Hall, tickets through the Perth Concert Hall website or Ticketmaster.

by DAVID BELL

IT’S a big “yes” from Perth—with 71 per cent of voters in the federal Perth electorate in favour of marriage equality.

The highest “yes” vote in the country was Melbourne and Sydney, both with 84 per cent, while some parts of New South Wales were as low as 26 per cent.

The next hurdle is getting the legislation through parliament.

WA senator Dean Smith has drafted a private members bill that was due to be introduced on Wednesday evening (November 15).

It includes protections for religious beliefs so priests won’t be forced to marry same-sex couples, but some conservative MPs are concocting their own version, with “increased protection” for people who don’t want to cater to gay weddings, like florists or cakemakers.

While they’ve been rebuffed by prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who’s backing the bill from Mr Smith, Notre Dame senior politics lecturer Martin Drum says the politicking won’t end there.

Dr Drum says conservatives are likely to introduce a long list of amendments for debate, which could see the legislation held up for the two weeks before parliament shuts down for the end of the year.

He says they may also try to get amendments included that would make it impossible for Labor to support the bill, giving them the opportunity to paint the opposition as wreckers.

Equal Love WA is now holding a “Make Yes Law!” post-results rally on November 18 at Forrest Chase in the CBD, urging federal parliament to get on with it and legislate before Christmas.

Hundreds of people congregated at Northbridge Piazza early Wednesday morning to hear the result.

Perth’s state Labor MP John Carey said, “I was at the Piazza surrounded by all these couples who are deeply in love. I was so happy for them, it was brilliant to see all these people so happy and over the moon…there’s an incredible sense of relief.”

by DAVID BELL and STEVE GRANT

NEW Bayswater mayor Dan Bull has lambasted the WA Planning Commission for ignoring the community’s wishes in supporting a new developer-friendly structure plan for Meltham.

The proposed plan was submitted by consultants WA Planning Solutions, on behalf of developer Pindan and land owners with substantial holdings in the area, and permits six-storey buildings.

Bayswater council undertook community consultation about the plan earlier this year and received 355 submissions, with most people opposing it.

Height limit

Eighty three people were in favour because they thought it’d bring more life to the area, improve business and increase public transport use, and another 52 supported it with modifications.

The Voice spoke to many of the people against and found they weren’t the usual “no change ever” or NIMBY crowd.

Many wanted the structure plan to cover a wider area and allow a height limit of about three storeys across a bigger patch of the suburb, instead of allowing six storeys in a small area.

Based on that feedback, Bayswater councillors recommended the WAPC reject the structure plan, or failing that at least include conditions like a lower height, an intersection upgrade to handle the increased traffic and a requirement for more public open space.

Cr Bull says the WAPC ignored that feedback.

“The WAPC’s approach to growth around activity centres is tantamount to drawing a circle around Meltham Station and marking everything inside as high density—It’s just not that simple,” he says.

“Council and its community have extensive knowledge of the area surrounding Meltham Station. This type of development needs to be considered in a local context, in line with the typography and character of the area.

“The WAPC has ignored the city’s concerns regarding permitted heights, development density and the provision of public open space.

“The WAPC’s approval will allow developments of up to six storeys in some areas which is significantly greater than the height recommended by the city.”

“The approval also ignores council’s request that the structure plan identify new areas of public open space.

“The Meltham Station Precinct does not contain a single area of useable open space. This could leave future residents with limited access to neighbourhood parks.

“That’s contrary to our Garden City ethos and one of the basic amenities expected by all communities.”

The WAPC has recommended the council develop new policies to increase residential densities within a 400 metre walking distance from the station.

The structure plan will now go through another round of amendments before final approval from the WAPC.

Cr Bull says it’s not the first “out of touch” decision by the WAPC recently.

“We also saw it with their decision to ignore council and allow significant development adjacent to the Eric Singleton Bird Sanctuary,” he says.

“We also saw it with the recent decision on a town planning scheme amendment that the city proposed to control the proliferation of out of scale, lookalike apartments through the City’s Character Protection Areas, and now we’ve seen it with the Meltham Station Precinct Structure Plan.

“Why bother consulting with the community and with council if you’re going to ignore the feedback you receive.

“This matter needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.”

Many residents called in to give us their reasons for opposing the structure plan. Sandra Sjollema said “we are just so disappointed in the outcome”. She says “we never said the area doesn’t need to have density…we are not NIMBYs” but like many locals she’d prefer a three-storey heights throughout the TOD catchment area.

Resident Jan Martin says “we’re smart enough to know [change] has to happen, it’s just about the scale…The fact is we are around a trainstation and we do need to increase density”. She said she’d be happy with three or four storeys across a wider area, but “six storeys on a hill equals an eyesore.”

 by DAVID BELL

BAYSWATER council will look at creating a greener city using a design strategy described by one councillor as “a bunch of waffle”.

At Tuesday’s monthly meeting, Cr Catherine Ehrhardt successfully tabled a motion calling on officers to prepare a report on biophilic design and start working on appropriate policies.

Cr Ehrhardt says biophilic design responds to the innate human need to connect to nature.

“The main principles include green corridors and green spaces, green building elements such as green walls and roofs,” she says.

“It’s about bringing nature to urban areas, and putting it at the core of building designs, rather than as an afterthought.”

Cr Ehrhardt says great biophilic architecture can be found in Chicago, Singapore and Canada, and over east Burwood council had a ‘green roof’ policy for buildings over eight storeys.

“You have greenery up there and they act like an insulation for the building,” Cr Ehrhardt says.

“You can harvest water through them, and they also are more heat reflective than most building roofs like concrete.”

But Cr Brent Fleeton voted against the motion, saying there’s more pressing issues.

“We haven’t got the basics right in terms of development in Bayswater, that being our draft structure plan, but somehow we’re off talking about this,” he says.

“We have proven time and time again we cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.”

A ‘green wall’ was installed at the Northbridge Piazza in 2009, but Perth council had to spend $60,000 on a ”modular vertical garden system” after the plants started carking it.

Ms Ehrhardt said other places in Perth had employed biophilic design and were doing very well.

“QV1 has a green roof with a community garden; there are even chickens up there,” she says.

“It comes down to pure financials. If you put a green roof and biophilic ideas on larger buildings, the cost is spread more evenly.

“The more buildings that employ biophilic design, the cheaper it will get.

“We need to encourage developers to do these kind of things to buildings.”

by MOLLY SCHMIDT

ONE HUNDRED Bayswater residents will assist Australia’s leading universities and scientists tackle climate change next summer.

Bayswater council has accepted an invitation from RMIT University to be involved in a project which puts scientists and communities together to try and improve urban microclimates.

Deputy mayor Chris Cornish’s motion to participate in the project was passed 9-1 at a council meeting, Tuesday night.

“What’s going to happen is they are going to try and get 100 citizens involved to take detailed temperature recordings over a couple of periods next summer,” he says.

“They are going to train these people and give them equipment and they are hoping to monitor temperature movements and impacts.

“The project responds to the number of extreme hot days expected to increase significantly in all Australian cities over the next decade.”

The data will be used to raise awareness of the consequences of climate change and help policy makers predict future health and energy needs.

Cr Cornish said the project would only require a city staffer to work on the project for five days.

Cr Brent Fleeton voted against the motion. “I obviously see the importance of doing that type of work but I think there are other things we could be doing when we are so pressed in terms of staffing resources at the moment.”

by MOLLY SCHMIDT