Perth Voice Interactive

AN 82-year-old grandmother is set to press charges against her grand-daughter and her partner over a demolished shed that could see her left with a council fine.

“As much as she is my grand-daughter she needs to learn a lesson,” says Dawn Taylor.

In what’s turned out to be a messy family affair involving three generations, asbestos and illegal demolition, Ms Taylor faces the fine despite having done nothing wrong.

In 2011, Ms Taylor’s grand-daughter and boyfriend had been living in a Bayswater house owned by the girl’s father Neil Taylor when they were granted council permission to demolish an asbestos shed and replace it with a bigger one.

Ms Taylor says the pair never told Mr Taylor, living in Queensland, nor her, about the change.

Bayswater council says back then, there was no legal obligation for an applicant to get the owner’s permission to demolish sheds – and therefore it was obliged to approve it.

But the grand-daughter says she did ask her nan’s permission: “Yeah, yeah, sure I did, I did,” she told the Voice, before saying she didn’t want to discuss it and hanging up.

Dawn Taylor had legal care of the Aughton Street property but, living in Dianella and with her grand-daughter as a tenant, she didn’t actively manage it.

Recently, her grand-daughter and boyfriend moved to the country and Mr Taylor, who’d returned from Queensland some time ago but was living elsewhere, went to the property to clean it up.

He was gobsmacked to find the replacement shed in pieces and about to be carted off: it turns out the pair had sold it.

The bloke who’d bought the shed had entered the property to disassemble it and cart it off.

Mr Taylor got in touch with his elderly mum and the pair negotiated to have the shed re-assembled, and they’d pay the bloke $5000 for his trouble. However, he later turned up with four others and removed the remaining bits of the structure anyway.

Ms Taylor told the Voice she called the police to have them removed for trespassing, but they had enough time to remove the shed completely.

She contacted the council to seek its assistance, but instead was given a work order to clean up the mess within 14 days or face a fine.

It turns out the asbestos shed was demolished improperly five years ago. “They didn’t send a health inspector in the first place when they demolished the shed and no-one cleaned up the asbestos,” Ms Taylor says.

She is angry the council issued the demolition permit: “They hide behind this bylaw that you don’t need to ask for permission of the owner,” she says. “All I get is ‘we didn’t do anything wrong’.

“But I have to pay for it from my pocket.

“I’ve spent three days here with the skip bin cleaning up,” she says of the rubble that’s been left behind. She also had to fork out to get an asbestos removal permit and pay qualified contractors to pack it up and take it away.

“I’ve worked in asylums in this area for 19 years and I had never seen such idiots as this,” she said of those responsible for leaving the asbestos lying around.

by MARTA PASCUAL JUANOLA

CAMPING gear that Perth city council confiscated from Matagarup activists has gone missing or been destroyed.

The council confiscated truckloads of gear last year in an attempt to stop mainly Aboriginal protestors camping on Heirisson Island.

Legally the council was only able to hold onto the gear for seven days unless items were connected to a charge (they weren’t) but it’s been rotting away in storage for months.

Some owners have had to drag the council to court to get compensation.

Council staff are refusing to answer how they plan to deal with myriad complaints from unhappy owners.

Tanya Cairns donated a long list of goods to the campers, including 33 tents, three generators, 100 blankets, 80-odd pillows, tarps, tent ropes and a barbecue.

“I help run a charity, I’ve been helping these guys out for about 15 months now, buying goods off Gumtree, my local recycling centre, my local buy/sell/swap,” she says.

When she turned up to reclaim her gear last week she could barely find any.

“I did see two of the swags, and I left them behind because they were riddled with mould,” she told the Voice. “Everything was riddled with mould. The smell was like cat pee. It stank. We wore gloves. There was rotting, mouldy gear inside the tents”

Council staff tried to stop people taking photos but the Voice obtained this photo, left, showing bikes, drums, umbrellas, and even a walking crutch in the haul.

Ms Cairns has compiled a list of claims for her goods totalling $7261.90. She has a pre-trial court mediation booked with the council Thursday. She estimates more than a dozen others are in the same boat as her, working their way through the painstaking court process to receive compensation.

by DAVID BELL

RETIRING federal Labor MP Alannah MacTiernan says new-fangled schooling is no good, and she wants a return to more structured reading, writing and arithmetic.

At a public forum last Saturday she said the results of 30 years of progressive education were clear – Aussie kids were falling behind their international peers and parents who could afford it were leaving public schools in droves and paying thousands for private tutors to fill the gaps.

“We see that going back to highly structured ways of teaching, by teaching the sounds and language as a code and how to decode it is a more effective way,” Ms MacTiernan told the forum.

“Reading is like the basic tool kit for any other subjects. Kids who can read properly like being at school.”

Ms MacTiernan wants teaching courses to offer stronger guidance and not leave graduates to find their own way on Google.

“It is a scandal!” she told the Voice. “Why is it that so much research has been made about the effective way of teaching literacy, and universities still don’t teach students how to teach how to read?

“We had a very good turnout on Saturday. We had a lot of passionate and angry parents concerned about their kids being left behind.”

by MARTA PASCUAL JUANOLA

HUNDREDS of activists flooded Forrest Chase Monday in a snap protest of the Turnbull government’s dropping of parts of the Safe Schools program.

The program’s designed to stop homophobic bullying and teach students about sexuality and gender diversity, but it has conservative Coalition MPs and senators up in arms.

The right-wingers forced a review which determined some information was inappropriate for younger people and links to external organisations — except mental health — should be removed — the “bad content” as Nationals MP George Christensen branded it.

The sanitised remainder will only be aired in high schools.

Victoria’s Labor premier Daniel Andrews has pledged to fully fund safe schools even if the feds pull their cash, and his education minister James Merlino attended a sister rally in Melbourne this week to throw his support behind activists.

Here in Perth protestors called on the Barnett government to do the same, passing around petitions calling for a commitment to fund the full program. They already have Labor and the Greens onside, with Labor’s Louise Pratt and the Greens’ Lynn MacLaren two of the speakers at the rally, along with the School Teachers Union of WA, the Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative, PFLAG and the National Union of Students.

Mount Lawley senior high school student Oscar Kaspi-Crutchett spoke to the crowd and said “recently [anti-Safe School] activists have come to my own school and harassed students and parents to take flyers which spread ridiculous fallacies about Safe Schools, saying it could adversely affect students… are these the kind of zealots our government takes orders from?

“Mr Turnbull has backed down to the ultra-conservatives in his party’s underbelly, and to that I say it’s nothing less than a national embarrassment.”

Oscar said he was lucky because “my family’s accepting, my friends are nurturing, but unfortunately so many other students aren’t as lucky as I am… I know of students being attacked by their own classmates.

“Toxic attitudes of homophobia can sometimes be too overwhelming for those who can’t find the help they need. Every year we lose people to homophobia and transphobia… by gutting safe schools the government is endangering not only the safety but the very mental health and lives of our children.”

by DAVID BELL

JACOB’S LADDER near King’s Park will stay closed pending “immediately” required repairs.

Popular with exercisers but a bane for neighbours tired of 5am huffing and grunting, the stairs were closed in February for inspection.

Now, Perth city council construction and maintenance tsar Paul Crosetta says they’ll likely stay closed till “at least until late May 2016”.

Built in 1909 and named for the book of Genesis story about Jacob’s difficult climb to heaven, the staircase is stricken with cracks that in some cases have “weakened walls enough for them to become bowed and loose”.

The next step is for the council to engage contract engineers.

Meanwhile, local exercise buff Ben Stowell has started a petition on Change.org asking the WA heritage council to list the staircase. He has 640 supporters so far (he’s aiming for 1000) and says the staircase “serves as a favoured work out, tourism and community binding location offering panoramic Perth views, unforgettable holiday pictures and a lung busting work out to end all work outs”.

With nearby residents recently petitioning for it to be closed, and now concerns about structural integrity, Mr Stowell is hoping heritage protection will ensure the staircase doesn’t close permanently.

Back in January signs went up on the nearby the strip of King’s Park next to Bellevue Terrace banning “fitness/sporting activity”, further shrinking the area where those so inclined can find their 30.

by DAVID BELL

PARLIAMENT HOUSE is getting surrounded by drones, with three beehives installed around the outer gardens.

It’s a three-way project between UWA’s Centre for Integrative Bee Research, parliament house and hobbyist beekeeper Joseph Kwintowski.

Many view bees as fuzzy, stinging irritants, so the project’s aim is to raise awareness about their plight.

Over the past 20 years honey bee populations have taken a nosedive due to disease, parasites and pesticides.

Legislative council president Barry House says people need to change their perspective.

”For a long time the bee has been viewed as a flying cane toad, when they are in fact responsible through pollination for a third of the world’s food supply,” Mr House says.

WA bees are healthy and speaker Michael Sutherland says “the fact that we have disease-free, clean, environmentally green bees in WA needs to be actively promoted and that status retained”.

So far they’ve been kept safe because of geographic islation, biosecurity measures and bans on using pesticides on hives.

“I like bees, I’m not scared of them at all,” Mr Sutherland says.

“I’ve had swarms in the garden and I’ve always had people in to take them away rather than poisoning them.”

CIBER’s bee buffs are hoping to get people to take an active part in bee preservation instead of just squashing them.

by DAVID BELL

BAYSWATER is abuzz with news the council is considering saving a massive hive of bees from a dying tree earmarked for the chop.

Bee man Joseph Kwintowski notes a colony relocation costs about $150 – much cheaper than killing them.

A recent inspection of Robert Thomson Park’s 41 trees by an arborist found most were in poor health.

As a result, 19 need remedial treatment and three are hanging by a thread. Their fate rests with a decision due to be made by Bayswater at this week’s meeting (which was just after Voice deadline).

The council will decide whether they should all be felled or whether two could be saved and then fenced to protect people from falling branches.

The bee colony is in one of the three sickest trees, and is so large it extends from the upper branches to inside much of the hollowed trunk.

Councillor Chris Cornish told the Voice it was important to save the bees.

by MARTA PASCUAL JUANOLA

BAYSWATER railway station will get a facelift using money left over from the Forrestfield Airport Link, transport minister Dean Nalder says.

Community group the Baysie Rollers met with Mr Nalder and Bayswater council deputy mayor Stephanie Coates recently to get an update on the works.

The rollers had been pushing for the upgrade of the station to be included in the link’s budget this year

The FAL will connect Forrestfield to the Midland line near Bayswater via a tunnel. It promises to make the trip from Perth CBD to the airport five minutes faster than by car and without the hassle.

At the meeting Mr Nalder acknowledged Baysie station needs an upgrade but said he wouldn’t go over the project’s $2 billion budget.

However, he agreed to use any left over money to give the station a small facelift with chances of bigger improvements in the future.

Baysie rollers chairman Scott Adams feels optimistic that “something will happen” even if it’s not “a massive upgrade” and reckons the station needs more shelter, better security, public toilets, an integrated train-bus interchange and improved bike lanes.

Bayswater council will vote this week whether to hold public consultation about the upgrade.

by MARTA PASCUAL JUANOLA