Perth Voice Interactive

AFTER US president Joe Biden’s shaky performance on the televised CNN election debate, there have been calls for the 81-year-old to take a cognitive test and some have even lobbied for an age limit for politicians.  

In the wake of all this hullabaloo, Murdoch University has unveiled a new questionnaire that could transform the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia. 

The McCusker Subjective Cognitive Impairment Inventory is the culmination of more than a decade of research led by professor of psychology and clinical neuroscience Hamid Sohrabi at Murdoch’s Health Futures Institute.

“The McSCI is a major contribution to the field of cognitive health and dementia screening,” Prof Sohrabi says.

“It can identify individuals with moderate to severe levels of subjective cognitive decline with 99.9 per cent accuracy.”

The 46-item, self-report questionnaire focuses on six cognitive areas – memory, language, orientation, attention and concentration, visuoconstruction abilities and executive function. 

Importantly, the tool will be Open Access, meaning no cost to clinicians or researchers. 

Prof Sohrabi hopes that using the McSCI will become commonplace for early dementia screening. 

“This tool is particularly useful for detecting cognitive decline related to neurodegenerative processes, such as the preclinical stages of Alzheimer’s disease,” he says. 

Alzheimer’s Research Australia collaborated on developing the questionnaire, and its director of research professor Ralph Martins says the key to managing the disease is to get onto it quickly.

“Early diagnosis of Alzheimer’s is essential for treatments to be effective – McSCi is a powerful tool to screen individuals at high risk of Alzheimer’s and dementia,” he says.

Of the more than 421,000 Australians living with dementia today, Alzheimer’s disease is the mostly commonly diagnosed form of dementia in older adults.

Recent advances in immunotherapies, specifically the FDA-approved drugs Lecanemab and Donanemab, suggest that the earlier Alzheimer’s is detected, the more effective the treatment.

But the early signs of dementia can be very subtle, and they differ from person to person. According to Dementia Australia, the most common early signs of dementia include, but are not limited to, memory loss, changes in planning and problem-solving abilities and difficulties in completing everyday tasks.

The McSCI can accurately distinguish between these pre-clinical symptoms and those reported in clinical stages of dementia, better detecting those at risk of, rather than those with, dementia.

Prof Sohrabi says they are trying to raise funds to make the McSCI available online for researchers and GPs.

“In addition, many people may have not access to brain imaging and if we do brain imaging on everybody that we suspect to be at risk, we will be facing significant financial outcomes as brain imaging is very expensive,” he says.

“Our test increases the likelihood of minimising these costs by helping to identify those who should do brain imaging.”

If this story has prompted any questions or concerns, please call the National Dementia Helpline 1800 100 500 (24 hours, 7 days a week) or visit dementia.org.au/helpline. 

For more info on dementia see dementia.org.au.

STIRLING councillors weren’t shown the results of a survey showing overwhelming support for cat containment when voting to proceed with a local law that looks set to kick the issue down the road again.

At its last meeting the council agreed to move forward with amendments to its Keeping and Control of Cats Local Law, but as former council aspirant Simon Wheeler noted in public question time, only a dozen responses to its advertising of the law were included in the agenda, and not the 144 submissions gathered during the consultation period.

They showed overwhelming support for cats to be fully contained on their property or other forms of restrictions, such as night curfews. Of the submissions, 66 per cent called for outright cat containment, 17 per cent called for other types of restrictions and another 10 per cent listed problems with cats without specifically detailing any measures they’d like to see.

Just 5 per cent thought containment was an over-reaction.

“I was told at the committee, and later in writing, that the July 2023 local law consultations that were withheld from tonight’s agenda, with an overwhelming majority of the responses in favour of laws for the effective control and protection of cats, would be shown to council,” Mr Wheeler said.

“That local law process can not, according to tonight’s reports, even consider the wishes of the vast majority of respondents; it won’t be on the table.

“Those with a magnifying glass will read in the officer responses to consultation results that adjacent local governments do not currently have any cat containment provisions, and to ensure a consistent approach to governance, neither will the City of Stirling as part of this review.

“So that decision has already been made, just not by councillors.”

Mayor Mark Irwin said the issue had been raised and discussed previously.

“This has been brought up before and this council has considered the cat containment laws through significant amount of time through workshops, so that would guide the policy decision-making of the officers,” Mr Irwin said.

The City’s government manager Jamie Blanchard said councillors would get to decide what went into the laws when staff presented their recommendations later in the year.

But the sticking point remains a parliamentary committee which has repeatedly knocked back councils that wanted to clamp down on cats. In June last year Bayswater council risked being held in contempt of Parliament because it delayed removing the provision from its proposed cat laws so it could argue the point.

A staff report to Stirling’s meeting said the Joint Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation was not supportive of laws restricting cats in public, but there was a softer option.

“The Committee confirms that the local law-making head of power under Section 79 of the Cat Act 2011 does not permit local governments to require that cats be contained within their owner’s property,” the staff report said.

“…the Cat Act 2011 provides powers for the City to specify places where cats are prohibited absolutely, although this is limited to specific places, so the City would need to specifically include every park, reserve, bushland and foreshore area as a prohibited area…”

by STEVE GRANT

A BAYSWATER councillor has called on the landowners of two key sites in the city to clean them up, saying they’ve been left to become graffiti-covered eyesores.

Elli Petersen-Pik has been raising questions about the old Williamson’s Motor House and Albany Bell Hatchery on Guildford Road for a couple of months, and says the tagging has been getting worse.

“The neglect is very noticeable and I’m not sure why,” Cr Petersen-Pik said.

“Guildford Road is a key corridor in the City of Bayswater, and in some ways it’s an entrance to the City – particularly from Mt Lawley – and this is the first thing that visitors see.”

Both sites have approved developments in the wings, but Cr Petersen-Pik said that shouldn’t let the owners off the hook in terms of maintaining them.

An eight-storey, 152-apartment development was approved for the Hatchery by the state-controlled JDAP in March 2021, against the council’s recommendation it would have “undue impact on the amenity of the area”.

Cr Petersen-Pik said he hadn’t heard how that was progressing, while City staff also heard nothing when they reached out to the developer.

“The City has now written to the Department of Planning, Lands and Heritage to see if they can offer assistance 

 under the Heritage Act,” they told Cr Petersen-Pik in an email.

CraigCare is planning a $40 million, six-storey aged care facility at Williamson’s, with the facade to remain.

The council had more luck when it asked CraigCare to step up, as it engaged a tradie to clean off the flaking.

“However, this will take some time as the paint on the building is lead and requires specialist services, and parts of Guildford Road and Third Avenue will need to be closed to facilitate the works,” the email noted.

by STEVE GRANT

A PERTH-based lobby group for seniors and people with disabilities has called for the scrapping of a proposed roundabout at the intersection of Scarborough Beach Road and Green Street.

The intersection’s odd configuration has long been a bane of drivers and sees its fair share of rear-enders, but Sandbag convenor Tad Krysiak says Main Roads’ proposed roundabout solution will result in “indirect discrimination” against people with disabilities.

“Roundabouts are not at all friendly for people with disabilities, especially for visually impaired pedestrians,” Mr Krysiak said.

“Additional pedestrian signals need to be installed to safeguard them.”

Mr Krysiac says the roundabout will create a “blind bend” on the Green Street approach, creating an extra danger for pedestrians.

“Just to illustrate this issue further, this approach bend is a sharper bend than one in Mt Hawthorn at which an elderly lady was knocked down by a cyclist.”

He claims roundabouts are being reconsidered around the world, though the Voice did a fact check and couldn’t find much evidence.

“Despite roundabouts being a good option in certain locations, especially in new developments, a roundabout should not be looked at as a first option in upgrading an intersection,” Mr Krysiac said.

“This is because, while there are some advantages to roundabouts, such as channelling traffic better and reducing off-peak traffic delays, a roundabout is one of the most imposing road layouts in any location.”

He says roundabouts have slow overall traffic flow, can lead to low-speed crashes in congestion, eat up a lot of public space and put cyclists at risk because they can end up in the blind spot of a car exiting from an inside lane.

Mr Krysiac said Sandbag put forward its own suggestion of two t-junctions at the intersection which has says will be cheaper, quicker and would allow cars coming from Green Street to turn left into Scarborough Beach Road for the first time.

The t-junctions would also preserve several mature trees that will have to go under Main Roads’ plans and would significantly lower the discrimination against people with disabilities.

The roundabout was a commitment from former premier Mark McGowan’s steamrolling 2017 state election win, and Main Roads says its construction is likely to start later this year.

by STEVE GRANT

STIRLING’S trackless tram trial has picked up a national award for innovation.

The tram project won the Productivity through Infrastructure category at the 2024 National Awards for Local Government, with Stirling CEO Stevan Rodic accepting the award from prime minister Anthony Albanese while on the annual pilgrimage to Canberra to lobby for project funding.

To win the category the project had to demonstrate technological innovations, sustainability, liveability and productivity in investment strategies and planning and addresses long-term infrastructure priorities.

The trackless tram trial delivered a fully operational tram in Stirling last November, while the council also ran a Net Zero Symposium and Community Open Day. 

Mayor Mark Irwin said accolade was prestigious and reflected the hard work of all the City’s partners.

“The City of Stirling embarked on a business case, which has been funded by the Australian government, to investigate the feasibility of implementing a trackless tram system from Glendalough Station to Scarborough Beach,” he said.

“It was important to bring our community along on this journey so that they could really see what we were trying to do. 

“We held a trackless tram open day at our administration centre where we gave residents an opportunity to ride on the tram and share their feedback. 

“More than 1200 people came to the event and the response was overwhelmingly positive. 

“Of those who completed a survey, 94 per cent said the ride quality was good to excellent,” he said.

The council is currently finalising its business case and expects to deliver it to the federal government in the next few months.

PARLIAMENT HOUSE was filled with the voices of WA’s future leaders this week as 59 young people representing the state’s electorates presented and debated eight bills for the 2024 Y WA Youth Parliament. 

The bills were drafted when participants were divided into eight committees aligned with government portfolios, with half drafted into a government and the others assigned to the opposition.

They researched their chosen policy area and drafted legislation with a youth perspective at its heart. 

Mt Hawthorn student Drew Davison is representing the Kalamunda electorate and says he was looking at the Policing Reform Omnibus Bill which covered “many areas of the justice system”.

The proposed bill “reforms bail laws, so that non-violent offenders are more able to be released on bail, reducing the impact on lower socio-economic communities,” Mr Davison said. 

The month-long process of drafting the bill would ensure people were treated humanely at every stage of the justice system, as well as putting a greater emphasis into rehabilitations and care of WA’s vulnerable populations.

Once the debate is over, the bills will be sent to relevant state ministers as well as the WA premier, Opposition leader, WA governor, and lord mayor of Perth.

by SIENNA DALY