VANDALS have damaged artsy human-sized birdcages just days after their installation in Perth’s Murray Street.
They had been installed as part of Perth city council’s “Minor Urban Interventions” project to put weird little installations around the city.
It appears a baseball bat or something similar was used to badly damage the cages’ seats shortly after they went in.
Lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi says it’s “very disappointing”.
• Human-sized birdcages had to be taken down after they were promptly vandalised. Photo by Matthew Dwyer
“In the few days the birdcages were up they proved to be very popular with the public,” she says.
“It is so unfortunate that beautiful public artwork and infrastructure gets vandalised and damaged.”
She notes the PCC is still looking for its missing gumnut baby sculpture, stolen from the Supreme Court gardens in April.
The cages had been topped with wee kissing birds forming a love heart, referencing the Moreton Bay fig’s history as the “kissing tree” where unmarried Royal Perth hospital nurses would farewell their beaux before heading back to their lodgings at Kirkman House.
• CITY workers Gemma Bertrand and Justin Zanetic usually just take their lunch back to the office, but this Tuesday they decided to take a seat at the new outdoor dining room the Perth city council’s put up. It’s part of the Minor Urban Interventions product to liven up the neighbourhood (another one nearby was vandalised days after being installed). The pair say there’s nowhere else to sit around here so it’s good to have a spot where they can have a snack with buddies who’ve brought lunch from home—something cafes often frown on. Voice photographer Matthew Dwyer says in the five minutes he was there another four people and a seagull turned up, so it’s looking pretty popular.
“FUCK OFF!” an Australian Reclaimer screams, grinning. He is sporting a leather jacket and pants, Harley-Davidson tee and a long, thick grey beard: his long hair in a ponytail. He is one of many bikers demanding an Aussier Australia at the Reclaim Australia rally at Solidarity Park, Perth last weekend.
He isn’t holding a banner. Like most of the Reclaim Australia supporters gathered up the hill, he’s simply surrounded by blue, yellow and green flags. They have set up stalls to protect themselves from the pouring rain and eagerly await the speeches.
Staring up from below them, and behind a 40-metre police line, pro-multicultural counter-protestors scream back: “Muslims are welcome here—racists are not!”
Here is where the banners are, amongst a more heterogeneous group: older folk, young people, some kids, a Godzilla holding a “I may be a monster but at least I’m not racist” banner and even Tony Abbott in budgie smugglers, swinging a small American flag.
They’re more organised than the Reclaimers, hinting at some old-hand activists: they’re handing out banners and flags and even offering free lectures on socialist alternatives. Their stall is tidy, with pamphlets on topics ranging from Marxism to marriage equality.
Like boxers, or cats, the two groups size each other quietly, but as each Reclaimer starts to address the crowd, the anti-racists chant louder. “Shame! Shame!” yells a pierced organiser wearing a tee-shirt condemning Islamophobia.
Soon the nationalists are fighting back with “Boycott Halal” banners. Many Australians have started to oppose halal certification, complaining about its increased presence in supermarkets (brands like Cadbury or Kraft have halal-certified goods), complaining the certification fees are being used to fund Islamic terrorists. The Australian authority that monitors transactions says it has no information to indicate any links with terrorist organisations.
The Australian food and grocery council says the main reason for companies getting halal certification is to access wider markets: it provides confidence to Muslims (1.6 billion worldwide) that the product abides by religious requirements, in much the same way as kosher food does for Jewish people.
• Reclaim Australia demonstrators make their point in Perth on Sunday. Clashes between them and pro-multiculturalism protestors were only verbal. Photos by Marta Pascual Juanola
The Perth demonstration reaches its peak when Reclaim Australia members in burqas and orange jumpsuits walk in chains to confront the pro-multicultural crowd. Their banners refer to acts of terror by ISIS and other practices within Islamic countries they find offensive, such as the marriage of children: “I was beheaded for being Christian”, “A child bride is not a Islamic right, it’s a crime” and “Sorry, Lindt Cafe.”
This display raised a wave of middle fingers as well as boos and chants of “fuck off, racists” and the occasional “Nazi”.
Given their broad ranks, including parents with kids, grannies in floral shirts and a cowboy, Reclaimers reacted strongly to the suggestion they should “shit your pants like your leader, Adolf Hitler”.
Notably absent from the Reclaimers’ ranks were indigenous Australians.
The rally was peaceful until the end, with only verbal clashes between the rivals. Two demonstrators from the anti-racist group were arrested during the event.
THE WA Aids Council has been reported to the national Advertising Standards Bureau for an advert in the Perth Voice featuring explicit information about gay sex.
The advert for “two fun, informative forums for guys into guys” also upset upper house MLC Phil Edman.
“Why can’t the WA Aids Council be more discreet?” Mr Edman tweeted on Sunday, including a screen grab of the two most graphic sentences in his public Twitter account.
The advert also generated eight complaints to the Voice and its sister publication the Fremantle Herald where it also ran.
The Aids Council reported back to the paper this week that for the first time it had sold out its forums. Previous “family-friendly” ads had failed to attract participants and this was its first attempt to use more graphic adverts outside gay-specific media.
Despite this, council chair Jonathan Hallett reportedly told ABC Radio presenter John McGlue on Wednesday afternoon that his organisation would review its advertising to prevent similar ads which might upset people.
The standards bureau has told the Aids Council that, without having assessed the ad itself, the complaint centred around whether it treated sexuality with sensitivity to the relevant audience or used appropriate language.
If successful, the bureau has the power to order the advert withdrawn.
Perth Voice publisher and editor Andrew Smith said he wasn’t backing down, and urged the Aids council not to “end up as the story” by toning down its ads.
“We see your campaign and the way you went about it as confronting and challenging, but nonetheless appropriate under the circumstances —ie, a hard to reach target audience and a lack of success in using other media outlets—and successful,” he wrote to the council’s marketing manager Matt Ranford after Mr Edman’s tweet blew up the issue.
Statistics show HIV/Aids on the rise in Western Australia, fuelled by the cashed-up miners who travel regularly to Asia.
According to the Aids council, in the last decade local cases have more than doubled.
RESIDENTS at Leederville Gardens have been spared a huge hike in fees, with the retirement village’s board deciding to absorb the tripling of Vincent city council’s management fee rather than pass it on.
Last week the council decided to nearly triple its fee, from $58,000 to $150,000, after a review found it had been failing to keep pace with costs.
The centre’s board, which includes mayor John Carey, has decided to pay the increase from its $1.4 million in reserves.
CEO Len Kosova says other ratepayers have effectively been subsidising Leederville Gardens since 2001 under a “curious” informal agreement between then-senior council staff and the board.
With no formal contract in place the council is unsure where its management and maintenance responsibilities lie.
Residents this week told the there was confusion over who’s responsible for replacing broken doors, old ovens, installing airconditioning and general repairs.
Mr Kosova says he’s never seen anything like it, and he’ll now examine whether the council should even be managing the privately owned centre.
“It’s a very curious arrangement that any local government would enter into a business that it’s entirely unfamiliar with, without doing due diligence on the matter to understand its obligations,” he says.
“Firstly, we are not experienced in managing retirement villages. Secondly, retirement villages are governed by legislation which we are not automatically or intimately familiar with, nor even aware of.
“Are we the right organisation to be running this facility, not only in terms of the benefits we are providing to the residents and the board, but also to the broader residents of the city?”
He says Leederville Gardens is a huge impost on resources, with board meetings requiring attendance of three senior council staff. He believes $150,000 is a conservative estimate of what it’s costing the council in staff time alone.
Mr Kosova says Leederville Gardens might find it’s better value to contract a company that specialises in retirement village management and maintenance.
He’ll prepare a report for councillors with a recommendation.
Mayor John Carey says there’s another problem with the 2001 deal: currently three elected members sit on the board, so when recommendations such as charging residents higher fees come before council there’s a conflict of interest between representing all ratepayers and the residents. He’s intending to step down from the board.
VOICE snapper Matthew Dwyer this week spotted first-class constables Kristy Stephen (left) on Destiny and Claire Price on BJ taking mounted crime prevention to Murray Street, Perth. The lofty height is a great vantage point to spot wrong-doers, and law-abiding punters are always happy to stop and chat, they say. Mounted police cover the entire metro area, including down to Mandurah and up to Two Rocks.
MODULAR homes could be the key to solving Perth’s chronic shortage of affordable inner-city housing, says Curtin University researcher Jemma Green.
Pre-fabricated housing isn’t new but modular construction takes it a step further: entire apartments are created in a factory, then trucked to a site and fit together, including over multiple storeys.
Even though it can take half the time and a fraction of the resources and labour — resulting in cost savings between 20 and 50 per cent — Australia has never taken to it like other countries have, particularly across Scandinavia.
Ms Green is a research fellow at Curtin’s sustainable policy institute and, in looking into low-carbon and low-cost housing, she came across a new wave of modular construction.
• Jemma Green down at the Esplanade construction site, where modular building methods will be used for the new Doubletree Hilton. It’s something she’d like to see happen for affordable housing in the inner-city. Photo by Matthew Dwyer
She says it can be the answer to the problem of sticking affordable housing on the suburban fringes, where land is cheaper but where amenities like public transport are relatively poor: it’s long been a problem for low-paid workers whose jobs are in the city and can lead to commutes of more than 90 minutes each way.
“Modular is able to make medium- and high-density housing more affordable so people don’t need to get a house 25km out of the city only to find out they’re spending as much on running their car as they are on their mortgage,” Ms Green says.
Perth city council recognised the need for low-cost housing for city workers and built 48 units on Goderich Street in East Perth. They were swiftly filled but it was a drop in the ocean of what’s required. The project was hugely expensive and unlikely to be repeated with traditional building methods.
Other affordable housing projects have been slow to follow, but Ms Green is confident savings from modular building can make such projects more feasible.
The WA government housing department’s already dipped a toe in the water with the Adara project, comprising 77 modular units in Cockburn. It’s considered such a success it has five or six similar projects in mind.
• The housing department’s Adara apartments in Success were built with modular construction, keeping the cost down.
CIMC Modular Building Systems’ Australian chief John Zendler says there are barriers to modular taking off here, not least the attitudes of traditional lenders.
His firm is building the DoubleTree Hilton at Elizabeth Quay and Leighton Beach Hotel and he says banks are wary.
“There’s a perceived risk around modular construction because it’s new,” he says. He estimates Australia is around a decade behind comparable countries.
CIMC is big enough to provide its own debt so it doesn’t need bank cash but few others can match that.
He’s hoping that once banks see the projects up and running — over the next two to three years — they’ll be more open to the sector as a good investment.
Another stumbling block is Perth’s lack of a local factory. Currently everything is shipped from Melbourne or from overseas, adding to cost and inconvenience.
Anthony Pearce hopes to solve that. A director with ApplyInnovation, his firm has been manufacturing units in the UK for 15 years.
He says the local market’s ripe for his company to establish a factory here, and expects to ramp up production by the end of the year.
“I’m somewhat flabbergasted by the amount of product that is brought in either from overseas or the other side of the country,” he says.
Mr Pearce predicts the end of the mining boom will see people reprioritise value for money, and see more turn towards modular construction.
He reckons many associate modular housing with dongas but once they’re shown examples of the possibilities they’re blown away by the designs, structural strength and cost savings.
“We see an opportunity to provide production for medium-rise apartment buildings, hotels, student accommodation and aged care in WA,” he says.
“My experience of working in WA is there’s such a can-do attitude here that it just pulls all blockages out of the road, so we’re making progress here more quickly than we’d originally expected.
“Australians are an innovative bunch and so while they may be starting from a slight delay compared to the rest of the world, I think Australia will get up that curve pretty quickly.”
JUST shy of $10,000 will be spent on a performance review of Vincent city council’s new CEO Len Kosova as he comes up to one year at the helm.
Consulting company Portland Broome was chosen as preferred tenderer, despite its $9750 fee being well above competing quotes of $3860, $5000 and $4500.
Portland Broome’s previously conducted CEO reviews at Fremantle, Rockingham, Subiaco and Stirling.
While its cost is higher it promised a senior reviewer and provided a massively longer list of what it does for the money: along with a thorough review it’ll develop a personal development plan and performance objectives for the next year.
Mayor John Carey is pre-empting the review by lavishing praise on the new guy. “My personal view is that given all the challenges that our new CEO faced when he came here, including the prediction of an $8 million deficit, I’m personally extremely pleased at the reform that has already been undertaken and the future changes the CEO is mapping out for the organisation.
“I have no doubt that the council made the right choice in this new CEO.”
Since arriving at Vincent Mr Kosova has had to deal with a massive budget muck-up from the previous admin that looked like it’d leave the city in deficit, a bizarre handshake deal with the local Bendigo Bank branch that put the council $22,000 out of pocket, and a vague informal contract his predecessor made with Leederville Gardens.
FORMER Vincent CEO John Giorgi has picked up the gig as acting CEO at Claremont town council for an estimated two weeks.
Claremont CEO Stephen Goode is on unexpected leave and, in discussion with mayor Jock Barker, he appointed Mr Giorgi to take his place while he’s gone.
It’s a highly unusual appointment, with the CEO usually being replaced by one of the council directors, but they’re also either on holiday or sick leave.
We asked Mr Barker about the choice, and he replied that Mr Giorgi was an “experienced CEO”.
As a regular Voice reader, Mr Barker knew about a problem with Vincent’s budget last year, under Mr Giorgi’s watch, where an error saw it heading for a deficit, but he said “I’m not much interested in getting into what happens at Vincent at all, it’s irrelevant”.
“I’ve got nothing to say other than I think he’s a well-respected and well regarded CEO.
“People need to understand that when decisions are made regarding budgets, councillors are equally responsible, so when budgets go awry councillors need to look at themselves.
“I never go down the road of blaming the CEO because I know that councillors are very good at dancing out of their responsibilities.”
He said if a big mistake had occurred at a council where he was an elected member, “I’d resign” because elected members had a responsibility to carefully read budgets.
MOST customers to a new North Perth skate shop will arrive by bus, bike or skateboard but Vincent council staff still want to charge its owners $33,000 to make up for not having enough parking spaces.
Shane Greenshields wants to open a third Beyond Skate store at 341-345 Charles Street but says “the cash-in-lieu amount will limit our ability to take on the lease”.
Figures from his Perth and Cannington stores suggest ”most of our customers are school-aged and catch buses, ride bikes or skate to the store”.
This store will also be right by a bus route.
The council’s cash-in-lieu policy slugs businesses that are deemed to not have enough nearby parking. The cash goes into a kitty intended to be used on transport infrastructure projects to ease the parking squeeze around town.
The skate shop’s 6.25 car bays short and that means it must stump up $33,696 in lieu.
After hearing Mr Greenshields out, mayor John Carey hinted he’d be open to lowering the fee, but it’ll be up to the council to decide.
Bayswater council candidate Sally Palmer sent the Voice this photo of last Saturday’s protest on state parliament steps. About 300 people were ironically silent while protesting a new law—the Australian Border Force Act 2015, which came into force in May. The legislation compels medics and other professionals working in immigration detention centres to remain tight-lipped on mistreatment of asylum seekers they witness.
Perth Voice Interactive 