Perth Voice Interactive

LORD mayor Lisa Scaffidi and her allies have voted to keep a “gag” policy preventing Perth councillors from speaking their mind.

Most councils take their lead from the local government act which says councillors can offer personal opinions, but can’t speak on behalf of the city, undermine a council decision or slag off their colleagues.

Perth’s policy is a step more restrictive and according to the lord mayor’s interpretation, once a decision is made, discussion is over.

“You can’t continue to have a personal opinion once the majority of council has spoken,” Ms Scaffidi told her colleagues at this week’s meeting.

That means, for example, that since five of the nine councillors (Ms Scaffidi’s allies) successfully moved a no-confidence motion in deputy mayor James Limnios in May, he’d have been breaching the rules if he tried to defend his record in the media.

Ms Scaffidi’s comment was in relation to a motion put forward by new councillor Jemma Green, who wants councillors to have the right to speak out on council decision and activities, as long as they make it clear it’s a personal opinion and don’t adversely reflect on colleagues, staff or council/committee decisions.

But the old guard shot her down.

Veteran councillor Janet Davidson stole Cr Green’s thunder, quickly stepping in to move the motion. That gave her the right to make both the opening and closing remarks in the debate.

Cr Green, clearly miffed at being out-manoeuvred, said the changes to the policy would bring Perth into line with councils around Australia and let ratepayers know where their elected members stood.

Cr Limnios agreed. Having noted his Greek ancestry on his Facebook page before the vote, he said the concept of free speech was thousands of years old and integral to a free government.

“It was only this week that I was called into the lord mayor’s office and told off for speaking to the media,” he said.

Ms Scaffidi interjected: “You weren’t told off, we were having a discussion.”

Cr Reece Harley, who’s repeatedly been on the pointy end of the policy, says it’s a “gag” on free speech which has been “selectively applied and often ignored”.

“Preventing councillors from communicating our ideas and decisions to electors and stakeholders of the city has no place in a modern democracy,” he told the chamber.

“The former local government minister, the opposition’s shadow local government minister, and the president of the WA local government association have all publicly expressed their views that our current media policy should be revised.”

by DAVID BELL

PERTH should take a leaf out of Stirling’s book and make its citizenship ceremonies a little more “personal” and welcoming, says councillor Lily Chen.

A guest at one of Stirling’s recent ceremonies, Cr Chen says she was was touched by how deputy mayor Keith Sargent built a rapport with the audience by sharing his family’s own migration story, while participants also got a chance to tell a little of their history.

Cr Chen says it’s important for officials to connect with new citizens to make them feel welcome.

The Chinese-born lawyer took out Australian citizenship 18 years ago and is married to a former refugee.

“Our own view is that apart from Indigenous Australians, all of us are migrants ourself …this is our view so therefore everyone has a story to tell,” Cr Chen says.

“At the City of Stirling each individual has their own opportunity to present their own story to the attendees.”

Megan McAnulty took her citizenship oath at Stirling and was impressed.

“To be honest when we went to the ceremony I didn’t know what to expect. I thought it would be bland, boring, ‘here’s your certificate’ kind of thing, but it was a really nice, friendly atmosphere … everyone who stood up gave their story and their own kind of family background,” Ms McAnulty says.

“Most things you sit there nervously, but it created a really casual atmosphere.”

Citizenship and multicultural interests minister Mike Nahan says WA is one of Australia’s most multicultural states.

by TRILOKESH CHANMUGAM

BAYSWATER councillor John Rifici has been called out by a ratepayer group for not putting enough effort into his ward, a claim the councillor rejects.

Cr Rifici represents Maylands but the president of the local ratepayers’ association Elli Petersen-Pik has described him as a “close-to-absent” councillor because he’s on no council committees and has missed several special council meetings and workshops.

But Cr Rifici counters that he has an almost perfect attendance at ordinary council meetings, and had been on the planning and tech committee before they went on permanent hiatus in February.

“I was very disappointed to discover that of all councillors, one of our very own Maylands councillors (South Ward), John Rifici, would easily ‘win’ the award for ‘the councillor that attends the fewest committee meetings’,” Mr Petersen-Pik wrote to the 800 followers of his Improving Maylands Facebook group.

“Actually, he doesn’t attend any!”

According to Bayswater’s new “governance portal” Cr Rifici has missed both councillor workshops this year and only attended one of the five special council meetings listed on the register.

Mr Petersen-Pik says despite heading up the ratepayers association, he’d never met Cr Rifici nor seen him at any local events.

Cr Rifici lives in Fremantle but ran Rifo’s cafe in Maylands until its sale in 2014 and he still owns the building.

“True, it can be quite demanding to travel from Freo to Maylands on a weekly basis,” Mr Petersen-Pik writes, “but if he is not up to it, then he should quit. It’s important to remember that with a close-to-absent councillor, we all lose! There’s one less representative to advocate for our suburb on those committees.

“There are still 13 months until the next local government election. Is it too late for a wake-up call?”

Cr Rifici tells us he’s lived in Fremantle for 12 years “therefore the community that gave me such an overwhelming win three years ago were aware of this fact”.

It’s not his first stoush with the MRRA; in 2014 the organisation’s then-president Roger Tomlins wrote to Bayswater expressing “no confidence” in Cr Rifici.

“He never comes to our meetings, despite me asking him repeatedly, fails to respond to our emails on issues and is not on the ground enough,” Mr Tomlinson had written.

Maylands MLA Lisa Baker backed Mr Tomlinson at the time, saying she’d also tried to get Cr Rifici to attend MRRA meetings, but without success.

Maylands’ other ward councillor, Catherine Ehrhardt, sits on three committees full time and is a deputy for the East Metropolitan Regional Council, and has not been absent from any meeting since being elected in October 2015. She’s also sat in an observer on eight other meetings she wasn’t required to attend.

At the last WA local government association AGM, Cr Ehrhardt moved to mandate elected members attendance at committee and other meetings.

Cr Terry Kenyon spoke against her motion, but it was approved and WALGA will now investigate options how it could be implemented.

by DAVID BELL

NINETY TIMES in one day – we don’t know if it’s a Perth record for Jacob’s Ladder summits but Rob Coyle’s effort definitely tops anything in the Chook’s record books.

Incredibly, the Cockburn gym owner’s Sunday morning stepathlon isn’t even his main achievement; dubbed ‘Perth’s man of steel’, he’s preparing to climb the ladder 120 times in 12 hours on Saturday October 15.

Mr Coyle lives in Bibra Lake and says he’s committing the herculean feat for Telethon because he wants to set a good example for his three kids.

He also had a club foot repaired when he was young and believes Telethon, which supports a range of medical and community charities, is a great way to give back.

“I’ve had something that I needed medical assistance for so in the back of my mind I feel grateful that got fixed up and now it’s time for me to help and do my part”, Mr Coyle says.

“Thirty odd years later and I’m able to do this crazy stair climbing thing.”

This is his second Telethon climb, and Mr Coyle reckons staying mentally motivated over 12 hours is the biggest challenge.

His training sessions start at 3am, and he takes the ladder two stairs at a time at a walking pace, averaging just over 10 summits an hour.

“I get cramps and stuff like that, from the hips down I guess…but it’s not debilitating anymore because I’m used to it. Just a few aches to remind of the work I’ve done.”

Mr Coyle will be over the moon if he can top the $22,000 he raised last year.

by TRILOKESH CHANMUGAM

THE Organ Donation and Transplant Foundation of WA has warned it may have to close its office in Bayswater because it’s running short of money.

ODATWA owes Bayswater council about $1500 for three months’ rent at the Rise community centre and feared it would have to cancel its annual Star to Remember event, which brings together the families of organ donors, to cover the debt.

ODATWA asked for rent relief in August, but the council declined after staff warned it might open the floodgates for other struggling charities.

The organisation came back with a request for a $5000 donation, but Bayswater’s policy caps payments at $200, while it’s a national, rather than local issue.

But softies on staff, noting the organisation’s aims, suggested the council could make a “one off” donation of either the $5000 the foundation requested to cover the rent and the event, or $1500.

Councillors unanimously chose to kick them $1500.

ODATWA founder Simone McMahon told the Voice via email the money would go towards holding Star to Remember and they’d attempt to fund the ongoing rent through fundraising.

“We are extremely grateful to the City of Bayswater for the $1500 donation that council recently approved as it has provided us with the interim financial relief needed to enable us to proceed with the Star Night for our donor families at the end of the year,” Ms McMahon said.

“[However], unless further funds can be obtained to cover our rent between now and the new year, our organisation will have no option than to close its doors.”

Ms McMahon said the gala had been pushed back to December.

by DAVID BELL

THE WA art gallery’s latest exhibition treats visitors to a glimpse of Western Australia as seen by European settlers.

It’s a vision of a pristine landscape around the Swan River; unadorned, but not uninhabited as the exhibition’s title Unknown Land suggests.

Curator Melissa Harpley says that the title was drawn from a rough translation of ‘Terra Australis Incognita’, which was how colonialists viewed Australia at the time.

It’s an acknowledged European perspective of 19th century Western Australia, so the art gallery is also running two concurrent exhibitions featuring Aboriginal artists to “counterpoint and complement” this point of view.

Ms Harpley says Unknown Land displays artwork primarily from AGWA’s own collection, making it unusual to curate. It’s also a challenge because contributors range from professional artists through to scientific drawings by naval officers and even sketches by convict artists.

Some of the artwork also served as propaganda, depicting Western Australia as an inviting paradise for would-be European settlers.

“It’s such important material: a record of this place and especially the visual history of that place through the 19th century period”, Ms Harpley says.

“They present an image of the Swan River area as lush, fertile; there’s not much undergrowth so for English eyes it looks sort of park-like.”

Unknown Land will be at the gallery of Western Australia until January 30.

by TRILOKESH CHANMUGAM

ONE of the ugliest blights on Perth’s skyline and social fabric will be demolished with the state government asking for tenders to knock down Stirling Towers in Highgate.

The Homeswest block on Smith Street, also known as “Suicide Towers” for the depressive pall it casts over the neighbourhood, will be replaced with a mixture of housing types.

In a media release housing minister Brendon Grylls says it “will include a mixture of housing types and tenures, private and affordable home ownership, a reduction in the concentration of social housing tenants, and trial of new initiatives such as car sharing”.

Over the past 20 years mixed-income developments have come into vogue to replace clusters of social housing, where ghettoisation led to enclaves of entrenched poverty and high crime.

But the results internationally have been mixed: The HOPE VI public housing program in the US replaced poverty-stricken projects with “mixed income” redevelopments.

According to researchers Lawrence Vale and Shomon Shamsuddin in their 2015 piece for The Conversation, this led to “large numbers of extremely low-income households that once called public housing home” being “left out” of these redevelopments, “displaced to other high-poverty areas”.

Mr Grylls’ press release said the Housing Authority had “relocated the building’s tenants into other residences within the metropolitan area”, but that’s a length of land stretching from Rockingham to Joondalup, much of which doesn’t have Highgate’s public transport or walkability.

Housing Authority general manager Greg Cash says it was a painstaking, two-year process to make sure people were taken care of.

“The relocation of the tenants of Stirling Towers to new accommodation was one of the most complex tasks the Housing Authority has ever under taken. Around 65 of the 79 tenancies were relocated, the remainder vacated of their own accord prior to 2014,” he said via email.

“[It] involved meeting personally with each of the residents, discussing with them at length what location and type of accommodation would best meet their needs, finding dwellings that were both suitable and available (or becoming available) and agreeing on a schedule for relocation.

“In some cases, the new accommodation also needed to be age-appropriate.

“Some residents were shown up to six potential new dwellings over several months to ensure the best ‘fit’.

by DAVID BELL