As it happened: WA news on Friday, September 6

Good afternoon readers, and thanks as ever for joining us.

Hope you’re well on your way to finishing up for the day and week.

Enjoy your well-earned weekend, and we’ll see you back here with another live blog on Monday morning.

Into our eastern suburbs now where residents will be pleased to hear that “urgent demand” for netball and basketball facilities in Armadale could bring a new stadium for the region.

The City of Armadale, Netball WA and Basketball WA have joined forces to advocate for state and federal funding to build the Armadale Regional Recreation Reserve – and let’s hope they have more success than the City of South Perth residents’ 10-year-battle to get an aquatic centre (which was ultimately in vain).

Stakeholders met in Armadale last night to sign a memorandum of understanding.

The City of Armadale, home to more than 105,000 people, has committed $10 million to get the ball rolling.

Stage one will include a multi-sport district facility with 20 new outdoor and eight indoor netball/basketball courts, and an indoor sporting complex with gym and community facilities.

There are 1649 registered Netball WA and Basketball WA members in Armadale, but only five dedicated netball courts and three basketball courts.

Netball WA chief executive Simone Hansen said the project could increase Armadale netballer numbers 130 per cent by 2030.

Her Basketball WA counterpart Nathan Cave said a lack of sporting facilities in the region impacted residents’ overall health and wellbeing.

“Participation rates within the City for basketball are just 2 per cent, which is significantly lower than the WA average of 15.4 per cent for children and 5.1 per cent for adults,” he said.

“The current lack of quality sporting facilities restricts City of Armadale residents from enjoying the numerous health and social benefits flowing on from participation in physical activity.”

Stage one would create about 319 jobs during the construction phase and about 44 ongoing jobs once operational.

The state government will purchase two new drug and alcohol testing buses for deployment on Western Australia’s country roads as part of a $32.5 million package to address the state’s shocking road toll figures.

The announcement follows Monday’s closed-door road safety summit between Premier Roger Cook, Deputy Premier Rita Saffioti, Police Commissioner Col Blanch, minister for road safety and industry leaders who were addressed by Daniel Campo, the father of 18-year-old Nick who was killed in a crash eight weeks ago.

Along with the new booze and drug buses the state will also spend $2.1 million to boost police numbers in regional areas and 44 cars will be wrapped in highly visible livery identifying them as “Highway Patrol”.

About $20 million will be spent to upgrade 10,000 kilometres worth of regional roads, which will include shoulder widening and audible lines.

A further $1.8 million will be spent on traffic data gathering.

The money will come from the road trauma trust account.

There have been 127 deaths on WA roads so far this year — more than half of which have occurred in regional areas.

The state is on track to record the worst road toll in a decade.

A 21-year-old Waikiki man has been arrested and charged after he allegedly deliberately mowed down a Geraldton farm’s calves with his four-wheel-drive.

The incident, which was filmed and the video circulated, took place in the early hours of August 20.

Police allege the man drove his Toyota Prado onto a private farm and deliberately ran down several three-month-old calves as they attempted to get away.

“The exact number of deceased and injured cattle is not yet known; however, it is believed approximately eight calves were injured during the incident with at least one calf euthanised due to the nature of its injuries,” police said.

The man has been charged with cruelty to animals and criminal damage or destruction of property and will appear in Geraldton Magistrates Court on September 18.

Detective Superintendent Peter Foley said police were aware of the video circulating online, calling it an “abhorrent act of animal cruelty”.

“The vision is confronting and we take incidents of this nature extremely seriously,” he said.

“Animal cruelty has no place in our society and is something that will not be tolerated.”

The National Tertiary Education Union has demanded Edith Cowan University provide them with an explanation for the raft of resignations from its governing body last week.

Four members quit the university’s council after a new chancellor was elected. The union has said this was done while student elections were taking place and there were no student representatives on the council.

Edith Cowan University.Credit: Edith Cowan University

WA division secretary Cathy Moore said it was unacceptable to elect a new chancellor without student input.

“I am astonished that a university with a reputation for excellent student ratings has made such an enormous decision without a full council in place,” she said.

“It’s simply not good enough that this has only come to light because of media reporting and the university is refusing to clarify exactly what has gone on here, citing council confidentiality.

“Edith Cowan University management owes it to the entire community to give a full explanation of these events and a commitment to improving on its governance failures.”

Union national president Alison Barnes said the issue was emblematic of a wider governance crisis across Australia.

“We’re seeing an appalling lack of transparency in our public universities which is undermining great institutions that should be serving the entire community,” she said.

In breaking news, Chamber of Commerce and Industry Western Australia chief executive Chris Rodwell has announced he will step down after seven years in the top job.

In a statement released on Friday, the business lobby group’s president Nicki Ivory thanked Rodwell for his stewardship and highlighted his role spearheading the campaign to overhaul the country’s GST carve-up among his top achievements.

CCIWA’s CEO Chris Rodwell.

“Chris has led the organisation through some significant challenges for our business community, including tireless work during the COVID-19 pandemic to advocate for WA businesses and help them recover,” Ivory said.

Rodwell said he and his family had made the difficult decision to return to Sydney and be closer to family.

“It’s a real honour to serve the people in this state who put their capital at risk, especially the thousands of businesses that choose to be our members. It’s their commitment to trade and commerce that will continue to transform the wealth of the state and the nation,” he said.

Before his role with the chamber, Rodwell had spent four years as the country’s trade commissioner to Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, which required frequent travel to WA.

Rodwell will serve in the role until March as the chamber’s board begins its search for his replacement.

Laws on the way to get Perth’s tow truck industry under control can’t come soon enough, it seems.

Two brothers have been involved in a car crash after a tow truck driver, racing to get to a job, allegedly ran a red light and smashed into their car along Albany Highway, before allegedly fleeing the scene.

The driver, a 57-year-old man, has been charged with reckless driving and will appear in court.

The boys’ mother Amy Johnstone spoke with Gary Adshead on Radio 6PR’s Mornings to describe the moment her eldest son, 18, rang to say he and his 17-year-old younger brother had been “cleaned up”.

She went straight to the scene to see her own boys thankfully safe but their own car now needing towing away.

“Both boys were shaken up,” she said.

“My heart was racing, my heart was pounding … I was angry, I was fuming, I was stressing for my two boys … it got worse once I saw the video footage.”

This news follows the state last month introducing new laws cracking down on unscrupulous practices in the crash towing industry – mind you, after first announcing the drafting of them in 2019, following Adshead’s dogged reporting of said practices.

Vacant blocks of prime West Perth land adjacent to one of Perth’s busiest interchanges has been given the green light to host higher density apartments and commercial development.

Planning Minister John Carey announced on Friday he had approved a plot ratio increase for three large blocks nestled between Troode Street, Loftus Street and the Mitchell Freeway off-ramp.

To borrow a succinct explanation on plot ratio from a helpful City of South Perth document I unearthed in my Google search, it’s the ratio of the total floor area of a building to the area of the site.

A plot ratio of 1 would mean the floor area is equal to the site area.

Carey has approved a plot ratio of 5:1 for residential developments and 3:1 for commercial developments at the West Perth site, which is above the 3:1 ratio the City of Perth were seeking, that is, denser, so in practice it means fitting more apartments in.

Carey said the site would be ideal for infill development, and took a potshot at the city.

“What the City of Perth first proposed for this strategic site would have been a missed opportunity to revitalise the West Perth precinct and to enable more housing to be delivered in our inner city,” he said.

“It’s acknowledged there must be shared a responsibility across all levels of government to deliver more housing at this critical time, and this is an example of a local government not taking the opportunity to enable more housing in a key, strategic infill area.”

The City of Perth was approached for comment.

A 26-year-old man has been arrested after police found child abuse material on his phone after a flight to Perth from Bali.

Australian Border Force tipped off a joint state and federal child exploitation police team that someone on the flight in April was allegedly accessing and transmitting child abuse material online.

Officers then searched the man’s phone at the airport and allegedly found evidence he was requesting abuse material through a messaging app.

Police charged the Welshpool man with four online child abuse offences.

Independent Schools Australia has responded to the latest report from the Australian Education Union, which revealed a list of private schools that received more government funding than their public neighbours in 2022, as I reported this morning here.

And the gap is widening. In WA, 87 private schools fit into this bracket – double the number a decade ago.

Independent Schools Australia Graham Catt has expressed his disappointment, stating the union was using the complexity of school funding as a smokescreen to launch misguided and misleading attacks on individual non-government schools.

“The AEU has used the data to create misleading sector comparisons,” he said.

“Independent schools serve diverse students and communities, with diverse needs and so there are many variables in how funding is determined.”

He said nationally, independent school students received an average of $12,160 in government funding, while public school students received $22,510.

“Every independent school teacher, every leader, every parent wants to see all schools fully and fairly funded,” Catt said.

“They shouldn’t be the subject of attacks like this that deliberately seek to fuel division.”