Perth Voice Interactive

VINCENT city council has softened its stance on convicting people sleeping rough in cars in the city.

Camping out in cars in Vincent’s streets was banned after backpackers ruined it for everyone with their boozy, messy sleepouts.

The council will now only enforce the ban after receiving a complaint from a resident, ratepayer or police officer.

Mayor Alannah MacTiernan was concerned the original ban might have affected people who were genuinely homeless and desperate.

“There was a mother and child living across from me in a car for three nights because they couldn’t find emergency accommodation,” she said.

“We don’t want to hurt those who are genuinely homeless, just those who want to leave bottles everywhere and have a party.”

Cr Warren McGrath says the ban removes “colour” from the city.

Cr John Carey disagrees: ”If colour is backpackers peeing in the streets and throwing bottles around, then I’d rather have black and white.”

More backpackers have been camping out on streets now FIFOs have started filling up local hostels.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

ANOTHER shop in the heart of Beaufort Street is closing.

Zakka Box, opposite Lawley’s Bakery, is pulling down its kimono after selling Japanese homewares and gifts for just three years.

Zakka owner Yuka Cork pulled out of her monthly lease after the landlord told her he was planning to redevelop.

“I had no choice really, because I had nowhere else to set-up shop,” she says. “But I will continue my online business which I have built up over the last few years.

“It’s sad, but you have to move on.”

The Voice understands Ms Cork was paying around $2500 rent per month. The shop joins a slew of recent closures on Beaufort Street in the past year including Ottobrino Butchers, Vintage Tatt, and Antonio’s Continental Deli, next door.

Nearby restaurant Raah, which opened in October 2011, closed last month.

Raah’s owner John Stephenson says high rents had been a contributing factor.

The Beaufort Street Network is examining the problem of gentrification and keeping independent stores on the street in the wake of steep rent increases.

As the street has increased in popularity landlords have jacked up rents, in turn risking the viability of the funky, independent stores that draw the crowds in.

Traders who remain fear a street of bars and chain stores—the only ones that can afford the rent—will turn away the crowds and lead to shops closing for good and not re-opening.

Lease Equity director Andrew Pratt says the Zakka landlord—who also owns adjacent properties—is investigating options and has no firm plans.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

FOR the first time in nearly a decade the WA Museum will display a rare collection of Australian toys.

The toys are drawn from a diverse collection of 24,000 childhood items, donated by Edith Cowan University in 2009.

The collection includes toys, clothes, school equipment and other childhood items.

Many toys are ingenious home-made creations, created during times of economic hardship, isolation or wartime austerity.

Heritage Perth CEO Richard Offen wants readers to lend their old toys for display.

“Many people have toys that belonged to family members and have been handed down through successive generations,” he says.

“These treasures remind us of the original owner and the joys of childhood in years gone by.”

The exhibit is part of Heritage Perth’s “Australian Toys—a Century of Fun” in November.

To lend your toys, contact Mr Offen at info@heritageperth.com.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

WA GREENS senator Scott Ludlam describes his political career as on a ”knife-edge”.

He says the decimation of the Greens in the March state election—dropping from five to two MLCs—was a wake-up call: “In a perverse way the result has galvanised the party and attendances at party meetings have rocketed since the state election,” he says.

“It has made us all really focused and increased our determination to succeed at the September federal election.

“In fact I’ve never see so much interest in the senate elections before, because people realise it maybe the only way of stopping Tony Abbott having complete control over parliament.”

His re-election chance has been made more difficult with former West Coast Eagle David Wirrpanda announcing he’ll run as a Nationals senate candidate.

The Nationals in WA are enjoying surging popularity courtesy of Royalties for Regions and Mr Wirrpanda’s celebrity may suck vital preferences from Senator Ludlam’s count.

On Friday Senator Ludlam will participate in a debate with fringe political parties, including the Pirate Party, the Sex Party and WikiLeaks Party at the WA State Library.

He says the debate, organised by left-wing lobbyists GetUp! will make a refreshing change from the tired “Coke v Pepsi” debates featuring the Labor and Liberal parties.

“I couldn’t care less what people think about the calibre of the line-up,” he says.

“The Greens started off as a small party and built up their support base.

“People are tired of listening to the same tired old rhetoric from the big two, the public want more choice and opinions.”

The debate is chaired by retired political journo Peter Kennedy Friday June 14 (yesterday, if you have an early Voice) at the WA State Library.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

WHERE is John Hyde? That is the question people have been asking since the former Perth Labor MP was defeated at the state elections three months ago.

The loss meant it was the first time in 18 years Mr Hyde held no elected office.

The former journalist and actor joined Vincent council in 1995 at its birth as a new town and became acting mayor when Jack Marks died in 1998.

He won the top job in his own right with an overwhelming majority, before shifting to the state seat of Perth for Labor in 2001.

He served three high-profile terms—he was WA’s first openly gay MP—before being booted out in March by Eleni Evangel in a statewide Liberal landslide.

Now Mr Hyde is discovering FIFO life, as he rotates four weeks working in Asia and one week back in Perth.

He works as an adviser to the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development, and is a board member of the Global Organisation of Parliamentarians Against Corruption.

“It’s invigorating working with civil society groups on progressive policy and helping to get their voices heard,” he says. “The UN is undertaking a number of reviews as nations, including Australia, look to enhance the millennium development goals beyond 2015.

“Civil society is seen as an equal partner with governments in these forums.”

Recently Mr Hyde undertook workshops for the World Bank in Baku, Azerbaijan on anti-corruption and transparency in extractive industries payments.

In May he spent six days at the UN HQ in Bangkok, as Asia-Pacific nations met to prepare new agreements on population and development.

He’s also delivered a population health workshop in Indonesia, and is currently in Kazakhstan presenting another workshop there.

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

THE burgeoning sport of bicycle polo is looking for a new home.

Perth Cycle Polo player Scott D’Mello says players set up at carparks around Mt Lawley but they’d like something more official now the newly created sport is reaching the big time.

“We had the Australasian championships in Perth last year and we had to rent out some traffic barriers, but that didn’t work out too well because parts of them were angled so you didn’t get a nice bounce off them.

“The main thing that we need is a flat surface with barriers all the way around.

“We’ve been looking for abandoned warehouses… we could always use a mix between a basketball court and a polo court.”

Mixed-use courts where the basketball pole swings away would be ideal.

If you have somewhere suitable, you can call Mr D’Mello on 0437 159 720.

by DAVID BELL

KINGS PARK authorities have removed the tree where Barbara Campbell, 87, buried the ashes of her daughter Penny Easton in 1992.

Easton was the Perth lawyer who killed herself after becoming embroiled in a political scandal that was to consume Carmen Lawrence’s Labor government and become known as the Easton Affair.

Having scattered her late husband Alec’s ashes at the same tree overlooking the Swan River in 1997, Ms Campbell, a North Perth grandmother of eight and great-grandmother of four, says she was shocked to find the gum gone when she visited recently with a grand-daughter.

“I have to change my will because I wanted my ashes scattered with my husband and Penny,” she told the Voice.

“I couldn’t find it, a lot of roads have been put in. After I called Kings Park, they wrote to me and said they had moved the tree, giving me reasons why I was not allowed to do it.

“They are supposed to have feelings about people.”

Kings Park business and visitor services Marcelle Broderick wrote to Ms Campbell on June 6 stating, “the scattering of ashes is not permitted in Kings Park”. She says some trees are removed for health and safety reasons. New trees are usually planted when a tree is removed, “although sometimes the new trees cannot be placed in exactly the same location for a variety of reasons”.

Ms Campbell says it’s not uncommon for people to scatter the ashes of loved ones in Kings Park, particularly those who’d served (her late husband had been an RAF Lancaster bomber pilot who later moved his family to WA). His death in 1997 was five years to the day of his daughter’s.

Ms Campbell says her daughter was a lovable person with a great sense of humour, betrayed by those around her.

“We didn’t want to bury her in a cemetery,” she says. “We just wanted to have a place with connections, but now it’s gone.” One of four siblings, Penny’s younger sister Margaret McCauley is a lawyer who in 1992 acted on behalf of women defrauded by Robin Greenburg in the Western Women swindle.

A petition tabled in parliament on November 5 of that year by then Labor backbencher John Halden accused the sisters of giving false evidence in court. The claim was found to be false.

Ms Easton took her own life four days later, aged 41.

Premier Carmen Lawrence told parliament the next day she’d had no prior knowledge of Mr Halden’s petition, an account later disputed by cabinet ministers Pam Beggs and Keith Wilson.

Dr Lawrence and Mr Halden were charged with perjury but acquitted. Ms Easton’s estranged husband Brian Mahon Easton—who’d told Mr Halden Penny had lied about him in the Family Court—was imprisoned for seven days for refusing to apologise to parliament.

After Dr Lawrence’s move to federal parliament the Easton Affair surfaced again. Liberal premier Richard Court launched a Royal Commission that derailed the former premier’s promising career.

by CARMELO AMALFI

Keen on the right name
SEEMING to be in chit-chat with Stirling’s top brass and the Mount Lawley MP Michael Sutherland is “Stuart Keenan MP…” (page 2; Camera frenzy caption, May 18, 2013).
Mr Keenan has previously evaded my radar, as the saying goes. My chattering friends wonder how often he’s mistaken for Mt Lawley’s dapper and frisky estate agent, Stuart Irving?
Eileen Richmond
Park Rd, Mount Lawley
The Ed says: Apologies to both Mr Stuart Irving (the dapper fellow in the photo) and to Mr MICHAEL Keenan the federal Stirling MP who was not in the photo. Sigh. We blame the beer.

Making sense
IT is several years ago, even seven, since then-Perth city councillor Lisa Scaffidi stated in the Voice some radical views on local government.
In response, my first letter to the Voice: I wrote to the effect Ms Scaffidi had more sense in a single hair of her head than the entire bunch of WA veteran councillors.
Today the same sentiment endures and probably holds true regarding the now Lord Mayor of Perth, Ms Scaffidi, and our entire bunch of WA politicians.
In recognising this it was probably an adviser to the Barnett government who’d suggested the Lord Mayor should be approached to join a delegation expected to attend a European energy conference over four days in Scotland come September—its focus being offshore Europe: the next 50 years (Voice, May 4, 2013).
From a pragmatic WA perspective, a demanding week-long trip.
Such an invitation most likely included all expenses (estimated $15,000) paid. How could it not? And there’s the rub. Ms Scaffidi’s conscience, I believe, would make it impossible for her to appear to be in the pocket of the ruling Liberal party.
The lord mayor, also president of the World Energy Cities, will join the delegation only with a majority of City of Perth councillors being agreed upon the expense
These councillors, in turn, are obliged to consider the trip in terms of what is best for our capital city’s ratepayers, and WA.
Let me save Ms Scaffidi repeating for the umpteenth time that Perth’s civic leader and first woman lord mayor is not interested in state or federal politics. This despite a time when she was generally considered more popular than a former state Labor leader, Eric Ripper, and the same can probably be said of its current leader, Mark McGowan.
Yet Ms Scaffidi has never even been affiliated to a political party. Family apart, her first love is, and always has been, the city of her birth. By now there can be few who doubt this—even her faceless critics who fear any change to the city even in the name of improvement.
Over almost six years her incredible energy has been a major factor in the city’s rejuvenation and transformation.
Given her arrival in Scotland, the runner-up in the world mayor contest for 2013 would most probably have a quicker and more comprehensive grasp than any of her fellow WA delegates of what  might go on there. The other delegates most likely fighting jet-lag, a temporary affliction to which the frequently-flying long-distance lord mayor seems immune.
My best regards to all involved at the Perth Voice, and a gentle reminder the lord mayor never knows anything of what I write until the honourable lady sees it published.
Ron Willis
First Ave, Mt Lawley

Neigh, I say
I FOUND the heading “Dressage for discipline” (Voice Mail, May 18, 2013) peculiar.
Dressage is a word of French origin meaning the method of training a horse, not disciplining MPs in parliament. Mr Benskin complains about the sombre black gown of the Speaker in his letter. MPs may object to comparing them to horses.
G Vajda
Lincoln St, Highgate
The Ed says: We’ve often heard MPs compared to the nether regions of a horse. But point taken.

Improvements
IF Stuart Lofthouse or Debbie Saunder care to run for council in the ward where I live they have mine and the neighbour’s votes (Voice, June 8, 2013).
They would have to be an improvement on the present, who don’t bother to reply to letters. And definitely not listening when it comes to six units to one block. Or greed for six rates to one, and Alannah what’s this volunteer nonsense? You get paid plus the perk, and, like parliament, there is never a vacancy.
Robert Hart
Anderson St, Mt Hawthorn

Such f’n!
WHAT an intriguing abbreviation for “fun” allotted to the heading of Cameron Poustie’s letter, “Who writes these f’n letters?” (Voice Mail, June 8, 2013).
I’m baffled by Cameron having doubts about anyone “in the world” being called T Greta Gatsby, even though with a magnifying glass I’m unable to find one in the Perth phone directory. Yet Gatsbys surely abide elsewhere. And outside F Scott Fitzgerald’s head and novel, what’s wrong with being called Gatsby—even T Greta? T could be for Teresa, Thomasina, Tamsin, Tulip etc—where’s the problem?
While topical, Gatsby can also become a fascinating acronym: “Gazing at the stars beside Yagan” brings him nearer Perth.
Amy Pageter
Mounts Bay Rd, Crawley