Perth Voice Interactive

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THE ageing Carillon Arcade (right) is up for an $8 million facelift (far right). Landowner Hawaiian Investments has asked the PCC for the green light to close part of the arcade and demolish 35 shops over three levels. Planners reckon the spruce-up, with the big window area facing Forrest Place “represents a sophisticated design response to reinvigorate a prominent retail location”. The planning committee gave it the thumbs-up this week and it’ll now go to council for rubber-stamping.

GLOUCESTER PARK looks set to be permanently added to the state heritage register, killing plans to develop housing at the historic racing site. The metropolitan redevelopment authority says it’s prime land for “a substantial new urban community” and wants to move ahead with a housing project but concedes any development is at the discretion of the WA trotting association, which owns the site. The Voice understands WATA wants to keep the track as it is and supports heritage listing, but we didn’t hear back from Gloucester Park’s Nic Lanyon before deadline. The park was purpose-built for harness racing in 1929 on reclaimed land used as a tip and “may have archeological potential” with artefacts from Perth’s 1900s population buried there.

THINGS are moving (slowly) down at the long-dormant McNess Arcade. The historic arcade was built by the famously scruffy philanthropist Sir Charles “Snowy” McNess in 1897, and is now owned by St Martin’s Property Group. The arcade has been blocked off for decades, a sore point for heritage buffs like Ivan King, the historian at His Majesty’s Theatre, who wants to see its historic splendour open to the public. St Martin’s GM Andrew Taylor told us in January that development now on the horizon, but they now are asking for more time. They’ve been given $80,000 in heritage funding from the PCC to help restore and stabilise the facade, but that cash is due to expire in January 2014. St Martin’s want another four months to get started and that decision will be made at the next full council meeting.

Gathering 60,000 followers in 10 weeks, Lost Perth would have to be one of the most popular Facebook pages in town.

The site collects old images and stories of Perth, focusing on the way things used to be and the old buildings and businesses that have disappeared, and it’s captured Perth’s imagination lock stock and barrel.

The bloke behind the site, 49-year-old fencing worker Warren Duffy, had initially hoped to stay low-profile.

“I didn’t want anything,” he chuckles. “I wanted to do it for fun.”

The former Navy cook says he’s always been interested in history and having been adopted and lost a couple of family members, he always found himself looking to the anchors of the past, the way things used to be, for comfort.

“People always talk about the past, people always talk in the past tense,” he says.

Two hours after launching the page 1000 had signed up. It grew to 7000 the first day, and at the time of going to press, clocks in at 63,800.

Mr Duffy now spends more time managing the site than many do at work, and he’s loving it.

“I’ve created some sort of warmth and happiness,” he says, adding there have been very few times where he’s had to delete a racist post or one that features “two-dollar words” (swear words).

“The messages that are coming through are warm and positive.”

He’s had a few favourites in 10 weeks, but one of the stories that touched him most was sent in after he’d posted pictures of his late sister who used to busk in the city malls, with a cat perched on her guitar.

A fan wrote in to tell Mr Duffy he remembered his sister, and recalled that she used to take the money she made busking to buy food for street kids.

“It’s heartwarming to know that she helped people,” Mr Duffy says.

He’s now planning to sell his fencing business, work on the site for a few months off the proceeds and then become a train driver, because he recently met one and reckons it could be fun.

by DAVID BELL

Perth/Stirling split the ‘worst case scenario’

Vincent looks to be split down the middle in what the mayor describes as “a very poor outcome” for ratepayers.

Alannah MacTiernan has heard Perth will gobble up the bit to Bulwer or Vincent Street. The rest will be swept into Stirling.

She would have preferred all of Vincent going into the capital, to protect its growing inner-city vibe.

“[Stirling’s] a very big council, it deals with a lot of suburban issues, it is fundamentally different in its feel and I think it will be a very poor outcome.”

Ms MacTiernan isn’t alone: Stirling mayor David Boothman doesn’t like the Solomonesque solution either.

“To be quite frank, I think Stirling’s big enough,” he says. “We don’t need another aquatic centre, and we believe there’s a level of debt that would come with that.”

Cr John Carey, who chairs the Beaufort Street Network, says a split is “the worst-case scenario for our local community”.

“It just would not make any sense to put inner-city areas like Highgate, parts of Mount Lawley around Beaufort Street, and Angove Street, into a suburban council. It seems crazy that we’ve got this incredible inner-city vibrant area that’d be put under the City of Stirling which has a different direction.”

He says Stirling is more conservative than Vincent, illustrated by the difference between Stirling’s end of Beaufort Street and Vincent’s (a divide that locals call the “Berlin Wall”).

“I’ve been doorknocking in the local community and I don’t get any residents coming to me saying ‘yes I want to be in the city of Stirling’.

“The boundaries of the council should be guided by communities of interest: That is, how are the locals connected, interwoven, to be a community.”

Ms MacTiernan is due to meet with the local government minister on Tuesday to get the final word on where lines will be drawn.

by DAVID BELL

Satellite navigation company TomTom allows a list of 18 Perth and Fremantle brothels to be made available to drivers as “points of interest” on its WA map.

The list—created by Perth cabbie Phillip McGree— is free and can be downloaded by anyone with a compatible TomTom who connects to its online update service.

It is unclear if TomTom validates or regulates user uploads, although there is a “report as offensive, copyrighted etc” feedback option beside the POI download.

The brothel POI is rated 3.5 out of 5 by TomTom users.

Prostitution in WA is legal but operating a brothel is not.

For years WA police have turned a blind eye to bordellos and unofficially regulated them, much to local councils’ and residents’ chagrin.

In 2011 the Barnett government attempted to introduce new prostitution laws to ban brothels from residential areas and make them legal in limited industrial zones. The bill failed to gain political traction and was dropped from the government’s legislative agenda following the March election.

Veteran cabbie Stephen Satchell says he drives around 30 people—five per cent of his fares—to Perth knocking shops every month.

“I’d say that about 75 per cent of my brothel fares are FIFO workers in their mid-20s, the rest are middle-aged men on interstate business.

“The majority of them go at the weekend, between 2am and 6am on a Sunday morning, but I get a few randy ones during the week as well.

“Langtrees in Burswood and International 300 in East Perth are my most popular drop-offs.”

The Voice gave TomTom two days to comment, but the company didn’t get back to us.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

A Vincent council candidate has been banned from posting comments on the council’s official Facebook site.

Perennial council critic Debbie Saunders, whose nom de plume was Bob Jones, was blocked after what council CEO John Giorgi claims was a, “series of negative comments (across a variety of matters on our Facebook page)”.

Unconcerned by claims he’s impeding on free speech, Mr Giorgi says the page, “aims to promote council offerings with a focus on positive, ‘social’ content that benefit[s] the community”.

Page rules state posts can be removed without notice, and “fans” are told to contact the council directly for serious matters.

Ms Saunders, who runs the Oxford Street cafe 50mL, was blocked after asking whether a man credited with taking a Facebook photo of mayor Alannah MacTiernan was the Anthony Minh Tran recently posted on the council’s website, convicted for soliciting a prostitute in Highgate.

Ms Saunders opposes the council’s “name and shame” campaign, describing it as a “mediaeval practice” that doesn’t solve the problem.

“I was highlighting that if the city is only going to publish names then they leave themselves open to defamation cases when those people of that same name suffer any negative consequences,” she wrote to councillors following her comment’s deletion and her blocking. I think it is grossly negligent to publish only a name, when countless others in Perth have the same name. Is it going to take a law suit for anything to be done?”

Cr Dudley Maier believes Ms Saunders has a point.

According to the electoral roll 277 people have the same first and last names in Vincent alone and 19 have identical first, middle and last names. “That’s why it’s so important to get the address where we can.”

by DAVID BELL

A journalism academic well versed in defamation law believes Vincent city council is leaving itself wide open to being sued by people with the same names of people convicted of trawling for sex in Highgate.

When Vincent first published its rogues gallery it left out middle names and suburbs and, in all but one case, ages.

In the weeks since it’s endeavoured to provide more details but of the five new names posted since, none have ages or suburbs and one—Liam Williams—had no middle name.

Curtin university journalism head Joseph Fernandez says  there is “room for confusion so that innocent people whose names resemble those named on the website might be mistaken for the offenders”.

“It is enough for the person suing for defamation to show that ordinary reasonable persons thought that the published name referred to him,” he says.

“Also, if the objective of this exercise is to actually shame the offender then such an outcome can only be achieved if the offender is clearly identifiable.”

Council CEO John Giorgi says the council’s not doing anything different to newspapers.

He says staff attend court but not all information is mentioned during hearings.

“Note that before launching the page, the city’s received legal advice concerning this matter,” he adds.

Disclosure: Reporter David Bell tutored in media law at Curtin in 2012 under Dr Fernandez.