Perth Voice Interactive

HAPPY birthday, Perth Voice!

This week’s paper is our 1000th edition.

It’s been a bumpy old ride for the media industry over the last decade, but despite the tumult, the Voice has continued to serve up its fiercely independent brand of journalism with aplomb.

We may have turned 1000 but don’t worry, despite a few grey hairs, we won’t be slowing down and will strive to “keep the bastards honest”.

Our robust journalism has ruffled a few feathers over the years and undoubtedly cost us precious advertising dollars, but we wouldn’t have it any other way.

A WA government minister once summed up the Voice best when he described it as “small, but annoying.”

We’re proud to be the Hayden Ballantyne of the media industry and will endeavour to keep bringing you the best stories from Perth and beyond.

David Bell is the longest serving journo on the Voice and has contributed to 400 editions and worked at the paper for eight years (he deserves a Purple Heart).

Read his affectionate tribute to the Voice on page 15.

THE State Administrative Tribunal says lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi “learnt very little from her experience” and “continues to be careless in preparing documents”, when it handed down her 18-month disqualification from council on Monday.

The lengthy ban was for 45 breaches of the Local Government Act, stemming from her failure to declare travel contributions and gifts.

The disqualification was due to come into effect midnight September 7, but Ms Scaffidi has applied to have it postponed until her pending Supreme Court appeal against some of the breaches is heard.

However local government minister David Templeman said “I expect the stay will be unsuccessful”, and has called for her to step aside.

WA premier Mark McGowan said Ms Scaffidi was “embarrassing” herself by clinging on to office, and opposition leader Mike Nahan agreed it was time for her to go.

If Ms Scaffidi is disqualified this week, we’re unlikely to get a mayoral election tacked on to October’s ordinary election.

That would leave deputy mayor James Limnios as the city’s acting lord mayor until an extraordinary vote for a new mayor could be held.

The SAT’s 77-page finding was particularly damning of evidence Ms Scaffidi gave to the tribunal, taking aim at inaccuracies in her statements and in documents she’d prepared for the hearing.

The SAT decision reads: “Given that Ms Scaffidi’s breaches of s 5.78 of the LG Act were the result of carelessness, one might have expected that Ms Scaffidi would demonstrate meticulous care in preparing for and giving evidence in the penalty hearing.

“It was an opportunity for her to demonstrate to the Tribunal that she had learnt from her past mistakes by ensuring that her evidence was totally accurate

“The need for Ms Scaffidi’s evidence to be totally accurate was reinforced by the fact that her evidence was given under oath.

“Unfortunately, Ms Scaffidi’s evidence at the penalty hearing goes towards demonstrating that she has learnt very little from her experience and that she continues to be careless in preparing important documents, even those that are to stand as evidence before the Tribunal.”

The Tribunal noted “Ms Scaffidi complained that she had been the subject of extensive inaccurate media coverage and submitted that this should reduce any penalty she faced”.

Ms Scaffidi issued a written statement in response to the decision, noting the Tribunal declared “this is not a case of intentional wrongdoing,” and emphasising “there was no allegation that any financial benefit arose to me as a consequence of me not including each ‘gift’ and ‘contribution to travel’” in her annual returns.

She said no one, including the City of Perth, suffered any financial detriment, and “there was no finding of me acting recklessly”.

“I will continue to fight for what I consider to be a fair and just outcome in this matter, both for myself and for those who elected me. In particular, I will not give in to those who wrongly seek to make this a political issue.”

Cr Reece Harley, who came within a few hundred votes of unseating Ms Scaffidi as lord mayor at the last council election, was still mulling over his options this week but says he’s “interested” in the role and would most likely stand again. He described the last two years as a “slow moving trainwreck” which had tarnished the city’s reputation and made it “so difficult or the city to do its job”.

He said that Ms Scaffidi knew the CCC report was hanging over her head before the last election and shouldn’t have nominated.

At the time of going to print we hadn’t heard if deputy Cr Limnios would run for lord mayor, but Michael Sutherland, a former Mt Lawley MP and deputy lord mayor, has said he is eyeing up the mayoral chains.

by DAVID BELL

YOU’RE reading edition 1000 of the Perth Voice, still going strong after the first paper hit your letterbox 20 years ago on June 5, 1997.

At that point the paper was still under the dual mastheads “Vincent Voice” and “Lawley Voice”, but a few years later it became The Perth Voice and adopted the iconic Chook logo.

In a dusty vault at Voice HQ—think the final scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark—we dug out the oldest copy of the paper we have in storage: edition 148 which marked the day when Voice founder John Arthur sold it to current owner Andrew Smith, who added it to his Fremantle Herald imprint.

At the time then-editor Brian Mitchell (now retired to a quieter life as the federal MP for Lyons in Tasmania) said “we had exciting, challenging days ahead” and even back then there was talk of how tough it’d be for a small print publication to survive in a changing media market.

“It is no mean feat to run an independent newspaper in one of the most concentrated media markets in Australia,” Mr Smith said in his first edition as owner.

A peek at this earliest edition shows that some things haven’t changed: there’s an ad from Voice mainstay Cr Rod Willox, announcing his intention to recontest his seat at the City of Stirling in the 2001 local government elections (he remains a councillor to this day).

There was a story about street prostitution around Highgate, a perennial issue we got a call about just a few weeks ago, and a letter to the editor complaining about “Fitzgerald St traffic snarls,” a bug bear to this day.

Some of the advertisers in our first edition are now under new ownership, but still continue to advertise with us, including tradies like Celtic Plumbing and Gas, and local institutions like the Oxford Hotel on our front cover.

Back in that first edition Mr Mitchell, a proud gourmand, gave us a glowing food review of the Paddington Alehouse.

He related that he’d first been there in 1988 on a first date with his wife, and he “must have done something right, because the poor creature later agreed to marry me”.

He raved about the “marinated lamb rump,” and a pint of Coopers back then was also a mere $6.70.

Our chief of staff Steve Grant just revisited the Paddo two months ago, shortly after it was the centre of a bit of barney when they hosted an event with a different politician—Pauline Hanson.  Apparently the lamb’s still good, “well cooked and tender,” Steve writes.

“The Paddo’s a local institution,” he concluded, “it should be with us long after politicians come and go”.

We’ve had some die-hard loyal letter writers too.

Mt Lawley author Ron Willis kept our letters page filled with his ornate missives for years, though in his letter to our 1000th edition he announced it’d be “my last offering to Voice mail”.

But he did pose: “How many times have I vowed such?”

If you change your mind, Ron, we’ll still be here next week.

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• In September 2010 a story by Katie Bastians (who’s still working as a journo over east) named a City of Stirling worker who had committed suicide just before he was due to testify in front of the Corruption and Crime Commission over dodgy tenders. All other media outlets censored his name. Then-Stirling mayor David Boothman complained to the Press Council saying we shouldn’t have named the man. Editor Andrew Smith argued “whenever possible all known facts should be made available to readers” and suppressing names of people who committed suicided compounded “outdated and unhelpful prejudices” and inhibited the “urgent need to confront these issues”.

by DAVID BELL

A CONTRACTOR “error” is behind the severe over-pruning of five iconic Mary Street trees in Vincent.

Former councillor Ian Ker contacted the Voice after finding the Hill’s weeping figs had been “butchered”, despite them being on Vincent’s significant tree inventory.

He said there was no evidence of the trees being diseased and removing nearly half the trees, with summer encroaching, would leave the area sun-baked.

We contacted Vincent council to find out what’d happened and CEO Len Kosova said it was a mistake.

As they’re on the significant tree inventory, “any pruning required is normally undertaken sympathetically and closely monitored by our staff,” Mr Kosova said.

“Due to an error by a contractor, this did not occur in this instance.”

The pruning was at the request of a nearby business that complained the trees were encroaching on their roof and shedding lots of leaves in their gutters.

The contractor was supposed to contact Vincent’s parks supervisor before starting the work so city staff could oversee the pruning.

“Disappointingly the contractor failed to contact our parks supervisor before commencing work, and did not undertake the pruning to our specific instruction,” Mr Kosova said.

“The city is assessing the situation to determine an appropriate outcome and to ensure this does not happen again.”

by DAVID BELL

THERE was a huge turnout for the opening of the Baysie Community Garden with about 120 people coming down to the Bayswater Bowling and Recreation Club last Thursday.

The opening was a happy rebirth for the garden, founded by community elder Pat Lim, after a divided Bayswater council narrowly voted not to extend the lease at the club’s old Morley site.

Gardening legend Costa Georgiadis flew to Perth to open the garden, congratulating locals for starting what would become a “public therapy station”, growing healthy food and improving mental health by bringing people together.

“Each one of us, whether it’s here or at North Perth [Community Garden], we’re all part of a big movement at the moment,” he said.

“The movement’s about bringing people together, it’s about health and food and nutrition and mental health.

“Mental health is what people come to a place like this for, to sit out and hang out with their friends, their buddies.”

He called Ms Lim a “champion” and a changemaker for persisting with getting the garden up and running and said “this is the future of our community health. Community gardens are public therapy”.

Bayswater councillors Dan Bull, Chris Cornish, Sally Palmer and Alan Radford, who’d voted to keep the garden at its former home, attended the daytime opening.

Ms Lim says they’ve got dozens more garden beds to go in, so anyone’s welcome to come down and have a chat and lend a hand.

You can keep an eye on what the club’s up to at http://www.facebook.com/BayswaterCommunityGarden

by DAVID BELL