Perth Voice Interactive

HOMELESS people left a fire smouldering unattended in the abandoned food hall on Parker Street, Northbridge, the Voice discovered this week.

Following concerns by neighbours from swish apartments that the squatting presented a fire risk, the Voice peeked through a kicked-out front panel to a scene of chaos.

Mattresses, bedding, food scraps, luggage, bikes, clothing and even a stereo system were littered around the heavily-graffitied and damaged building.

There was nobody inside, but a heavily intoxicated man wandering nearby indicated he’d been camping there with a “big mob”.

What our photographer didn’t realise until processing his images later was that while shooting into the gloom he’d captured glowing embers in a pile of kindling set up on the counter of a long-forgotten takeaway joint.

There was also the remains of a fire on the tiled floor.

For more than 15 years the food hall has been an eyesore, and periodically panels on the front of the building are kicked down by homeless people.

Kath Turner lives next door and says their arrival seemed to coincide with Perth city council booting a large group of homeless people off Heirsson Island.

Ms Turner says she’s very concerned about the fire hazard, as there’s a multi-storey apartment complex directly abutting the food hall.

She says rellies staying with her also copped an earful of abuse from some of the squatters.

Perth police media spokesman Samuel Dinnison says they’re aware of the complaints and “in the last 10 days we have attended the location three times, and on one of those occasions issued a move on notice to a male person”.

He says “in general, our response to such complaints may be resolved either through Move On Notices or criminal charges” but that won’t solve things long term.

“While each individual situation will need building owners and local government involvement, longer term solutions are required and WA police works closely with a number of community service stakeholders to identify and respond to such local issues. Enforcement alone is not an effective strategy, however where it is required WA police will act appropriately in the best interest of the community”.

The Voice understands that local coppers haven’t recognised any of the campers from Heirisson hanging around Parker Street.

Notorious

The food hall is one of a half dozen notorious tough nut properties around town that Perth city council’s struggled to get fixed up.

Often the owners are an amorphous conglomerate of shares, trusts and blandly named Pty Ltds, and many are overseas owned, so forcing action can be difficult.

Back in 2010 the council said the owners gave “a commitment to take steps to improve” the place but it still looks like hot garbage.

In 2014 town planners Rowe Group suggested the city allow it to be used as a condo or hotel to encourage development but still nothing’s happened.

We asked Perth city council media man Michael Holland if there’d been any update but they don’t talk to us anymore.

by DAVID BELL

A BAYSWATER councillor has slammed the Liberal party for using a tactic she says might trick voters into inadvertently sending it sensitive information.

The Libs have mailed out packages spruiking candidate Jeremy Quinn, who’s in a close contest for the federal seat of Perth. The package includes a voter registration form which looks like the Australian Electoral Commission version and includes a reply paid envelope.

It’s only when you Google the benign sounding return address of “Processing Centre, Reply Paid 49, West Perth” that you learn the forms are going back to the Liberal party. By law, the party then has to forward the form onto the AEC.

Secret question

Cr Catherine Ehrhardt, who’s also a local business owner, says she narrowly managed to stop her own mum from sending sensitive information to the Libs.

Along with name, date of birth and contact details, the form asks for a secret question and answer so the electoral commission can verify someone’s identity.

Ms Ehrhardt points out it’s a security risk because many people use the same answers across many accounts.

“I am not a member of any political party and am a swing voter,” Cr Ehrhardt said.

“Any political party willing to use this style of tactic to attain voter information, without full disclosure, should be questioned as to whether they deserve your vote”.

The practice is legal: The Electoral Act was changed in 1998 allowing parties to attach their material to postal vote applications and receive them, as long as they then forwarded them on to the AEC.

Federal parliament looked at changing the rules in 2010 but it fell in a heap. In 2011 the Christian Democratic Party challenged electoral results arguing they’d been affected by similar forms, but the court of disputed returns knocked back the challenge since the practice wasn’t a breach.

But legal or not chatter online suggests voters aren’t happy: Warnings have spread among community groups with whispers of people planning to send the envelopes back laden with glitter to annoy the recipient, and one punter even suggested whacking the reply paid form on a wrapped up brick to amp up the postage costs for the party.

We put it to the Liberal party’s WA campaign HQ the claims that some people found the practice a bit dodge. We haven’t heard back.

by DAVID BELL

THE pricey $5 billion City Link project is at a loose end after the Metropolitan Redevelopment Authority cancelled plans to work with Mirvac Group who’d been developing eight major lots near the horseshoe bridge.

The lots were meant to be the you-beaut centrepiece of the urban renewal project, but the two parties couldn’t reach a “satisfactory agreement”.

In a sanitised announcement titled “land sales update and EOI temporary activation opportunities,” the MRA quietly announced its board had “terminated the sales process for a master developer for eight lots at Perth city link”.

Market conditions kept changing and the economy got less sturdy, and eventually the MRA said the agreement wasn’t “consistent with our initial expression of interest” and did not deliver “value for the WA taxpayers” according to a release from MRA chairman Richard Muirhead.

They’ll instead try to sell off the land in smaller lots, and in the meantime are planning temporary pop ups to keep things lively.

by DAVID BELL