Perth Voice Interactive

A PLAN to turn the historic Maylands parcel office into a public toilet has been canned by the Public Transport Authority.

There’s long been a dire need for a dunny near the Maylands train station (five years ago the Voice reported on a neighbouring resident complaining about someone pooing in her yard), since the nearest one is at the Maylands hall about half a kilometre away.

Three options

In April this year Bayswater councillor Catherine Ehrhardt asked staff to look into three options for a closer loo; $65,000 upgrading the parcel office’s toilet to disability standards, a self-cleaning toilet on the station, or somewhere else on PTA land (both costed between $110,000 to $220,000).

Maylands councillor Lisa Baker also wrote to the PTA asking for the parcel office to be considered for an outhouse.

The parcel office is listed as having “exception significance” in Bayswater’s heritage inventory.

But the PTA has used the heritage listing to knock back the request for a toilet and will instead use the toilet to house staff.

The authority also kyboshed a council-run dunny on its land due to “major security and safety issues”.

“Toilets attract unruly, unsafe and unhygienic practices, requiring a fulltime security presence,” the PTA’s Leoni Wedge wrote to Bayswater council.

The PTA said it may reconsider an outhouse if, “as a minimum”, the city provided hourly security patrols.

Long-time Bayswater resident and regular train user Herman Hain says the PTA is being mean-spirited.

“Seniors need toilets,” Mr Hain said before giving a disparaging look at the new Seventh Avenue bridge.

“They spent $9 million on that,” he said before trudging slowly up the street, laden with his weekly shopping

by DAVID BELL and STEVE GRANT

BAYSWATER council has knocked back requests from two charities for rates and rent relief.

Community Housing Limited provides long-term, secure accommodation for people on low to middle incomes, and asked for three properties it rents out to be exempt from rates, saving it $3352 each year.

The local government act says “land used exclusively for charitable purposes is not rateable” but doesn’t define those terms so council has scope to interpret the rules.

That left the request in a grey zone.

“Even though Commercial Housing Limited is a charitable organisation, there is income being generated from the properties and therefore commercial activities are taking place,” staff said in a report recommending the request be knocked back.

Councillors Dan Bull and Stephanie Coates wanted to grant the reprieve but the rest of the council followed admin’s advice and knocked them back.

Meanwhile the Organ Donation and Transplant Foundation WA asked council to waive $5679 in fees for its offices at the city-owned Rise building in Maylands.

The foundation’s CEO Simone McMahon has had to relocate to Brisbane while she awaits a transplant herself, so the charity’s ability to fundraise has taken a battering in her absence.

All the offices at the Rise are filled with not-for-profits, and council staff fear the request may open the floodgates for any struggling charity to ask for a handout.

Given 91 Bayswater families have signed up for organ donation, the report warned feelings may run high and “there is a potential for adverse media” if the request was unsuccessful.

Councillors Terry Kenyon, John Rifici, Dan Bull and Stephanie Coates wanted to grant the rent relief but didn’t have the numbers.

The Voice has heard the council will instead look at a direct donation to ODTF, so as to avoid setting a rent relief precedent.

by DAVID BELL

THE Centre for Stories in Northbridge has taken another step in its development with the appointment of Sisonke Msimang as program director.

The year-old social enterprise was founded by Margaret River Press owners Caroline and John Wood and aims to collect stories from WA that slip under the mainstream media’s radar.

Ms Msimang says the centre helps people to understand and express their experiences through storytelling and then “amplifies” them as a way of bringing about social change.

“Storytelling is a good way to connect people with someone who lives in another neighbourhood, because we have had a lot of waves of migrants — which is amazing — but it can also bring conflict and discomfort, and we don’t try to hide that conflict and discomfort, we try to help people to see the different sides of the issues through stories,” Ms Msimang says.

One of the centre’s most popular initiatives is Food for Thought, where each month a different migrant group takes over the kitchen to prepare a feast for the broader community.

“By 1pm it is amazing; the place is buzzing and the smells of the cooking are all through the centre,” Ms Msimang says.

“By 7pm everyone starts arriving and the people tell what their experience is like, and one of the key messages that comes through every time is the generosity of Australian people.”

Ms Msimang says these positive experiences of migrants often don’t get heard amongst the negative headlines.

“It changes the narrative, you are getting beyond the surface,” she says.

The South African-born activist, columnist and budding novelist says her experiences will help the centre to take storytelling to the next level, which is to use it as a tool for social change.

Ms Msimang was born and grew up in exile; her parents were officials of the African National Congress and were only able to return to their homeland following Nelson Mandela’s release from prison in 1990.

There was a silver lining to exile – education. The ANC funded the education of its exiled members’ children with the aim of developing a pool of highly qualified professionals dedicated to public service.

Ms Msimang worked with the United Nations in South Africa focusing on HIV/AIDS issues before heading up billionaire financier George Soros’s Open Society Initiative, shifting her focus to promoting democracy.

“Our focus was on the small guy, because often they’re the canary in the coal mine, you know, so we’d be talking with gay men, journalists who were under fire, anyone who had a story that needed to be told.”

In 2012 she was accepted as a Yale University ‘world fellow’.

“It’s a mid-career break, so you have distinguished yourself as a leader but whose best years are still ahead of you. I like that way of thinking about it,” she says.

She decided to focus on writing and worked as a columnist for the Daily Maverick in Johannesburg, becoming one of the few female voices in the country’s media.

Early last year her Australian-born husband asked to return home, and she says her children are already obsessed with footy and “chucking it in the bin”.

But Africa is never far from her mind, and she made headlines in April this year by joining former children-in-exile (known as Masupatsela) in denouncing South African president Jacob Zuma’s lavish, publicly-funded upgrade of his home and gardens.

Mr Zuma has apologised for the scandal, but a court found he’d flouted the constitution in his handling of the affair. The ANC was trounced in local government elections last week, and Ms Msimang’s former paper the Maverick dubbed him “dead man walking”.

Ms Msimang has written a book about living in exile, provisionally called Always Another Country and is looking for a publisher.

by STEVE GRANT

A GROUP of senior and disabled Mt Hawthorn residents escalated a dispute with Transperth over bus routes to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, but with no success.

SANDBAG (senior and disabled bus action group) has been up in arms since Transperth diverted route 15 in August last year, leaving a swathe of suburbia around Brady and Tasman streets poorly covered.

“Transperth’s drastic change to the number 15 produced an immediate impediment to those of the most vulnerable in our community – those who require assistance for their mobility,” SANDBAG convenor Tad Krysiak wrote in a submission Parliament after the change.

Transperth introduced a temporary route 14 to cover the affected area, but it’s to be cancelled this week due to low patronage.

Loaded consultation

SANDBAG claims the PTA’s consultation process was loaded, producing different results to its own survey.

Transport Minister Dean Nalder told parliament 50 per cent of submissions supported the change to route 15, 30 per cent were neutral, and 20 per cent negative.

“…Transperth has many competing demands for services”, Mr Nalder told Eleni Evangel, who’d raised the issue for SANDBAG.

He said the change provided a more direct connection between the new Perth bus-port and the Glendalough train station.

“That’s no reason to change an 80 year old bus route for some bloody transport fetish that’s fashionable right now…connecting train stations?” Mr Krysiak thundered.

Mr Krysiak’s 88-year-old mother Eugenia launched this week’s Supreme Court injunction, but on Wednesday the judge found there weren’t grounds to stop the withdrawal of route 14.

by TRILOKESH CHANMUGAM

STIRLING council has been urged to repair the barbecues at the Hamersley golf course after two players were severely burned by a portable one which exploded.

The Hamersley Hackers and other golf clubs had been using a portable barbecue for sausage sizzles since the council-provided ones broke down, with the Voice hearing conflicting stories they’d been on the blink for anywhere between one and six years.

But a couple of months ago the portable barbie exploded, burning the legs of two golfers who were hospitalised.

Harley Bourke, captain of the Hamersley Men’s Golf Club, suspects there was a faulty gas pipe, but he says no one’s been keen to take responsibility for the portable barbecue.

It had been stored at the Gleneagles tavern adjacent to the course, but no one from the company would comment.

Hamersley Hackers player Eddy Hill says regardless of who was responsible, the council should have acted quicker.

“The reason there was a portable bbq there in the first place is because the fixed one was in such a bad state it couldn’t be used anymore,” Mr Hill told the Voice.

The golfers have collected a 36-signature petition to the council calling for the barbecues to be fixed.

Stirling council was contacted for response but didn’t get back before deadline.

by TRILOKESH CHANMUGAM

DAY CARE operator Marjorie Mann in Mt Lawley won’t be affected by cutbacks in childcare subsidies, says local Liberal MP Michael Sutherland (“Cuts ‘level playing field’,” Voice, August 6, 2016).

Mr Sutherland got a letter from community services minister Tony Simpson in late July which identified that only the Meela and Mt Lawley childcare centres would be affected in his electorate. They’ll lose rent, maintenance and insurance subsidies.

Mr Simpson’s letter says the local government and communities department was investigating whether to vest the centres with local governments, hand over the land freehold to the centres themselves, or to sell it off.