As it happened: WA news on Wednesday, July 24

Good evening readers, and thanks for following along today.

To recap, here were some of the headlines.

More than 60 windows were smashed by a mystery vandal at the City of Vincent Centre in Leederville on Tuesday night.

A new Perth primary school that will feature a massive 240 parking bays and cater for 1000 students has been approved for development.

And acting WA Premier Rita Saffioti continued to dodge questions about a convicted armed robber who is employed by the WA branch of construction union, the CFMEU.

We’ll be back from 7.30am tomorrow spoiling you for choice with new headlines.

See you then.

City of South Perth councillors have voted to reject their draft tree retention policy, aimed at slowing the loss of large shade trees in the area – much to the dismay of local activists.

At a meeting on Tuesday night, councillors instead voted to refer the matter of tree retention in the area to the state government.

One of the streets in South Perth, famous for its canopy of Jacaranda trees.Credit: iStock

The City planning scheme provisions and draft tree retention policy both sought to regulate tree removal so that large trees, over 8 metres in height, would not be removed or pruned in a way that would kill them, without council approval.

South Perth Tree Canopy Advocates group co-founder Bronwyn David said the City had been attempting to introduce tree protections for a number of years.

“I hate to think of the hundreds of hours of work that has gone into researching and drafting this, only for councillors to disregard the advice of the City and the clear preferences of its residents,” she said.

“The councillor’s arguments about the cost of implementation suggested they believed that hundreds of people want to remove their trees, when in reality most trees are lost when land is purchased by developers.”

Another group co-founder Kathy Lees said trees were already suffering from polyphagous shot hole borer attacks, and an increasingly hot and dry climate.

“We urgently need to try to protect our remaining large healthy trees if we want our suburbs to remain livable,” she said.

A City spokesman said they had undertaken a range of measures to improve the City’s tree canopy cover, including underground power, tree giveaways from a dedicated tree nursery and increased tree plantings on public land.

“After considering community feedback, both for and against, and advice from the City officers about the practical application, likelihood of enforcement and opportunity cost of the draft policy, council decided to not proceed,” he said.

Police have made another appeal for anyone with information about a violent home invasion in Innaloo yesterday morning to come forward.

Detectives are searching for a group of men who broke into a man’s house while he was sleeping, and attacked him in his bed, ripping more than $50,000 worth of gold jewellery from his body.

They are yet to make any arrests, but are throwing extensive resources into the investigation, believing the victim was targeted by someone who knew of his gold jewellery collection.

Perth’s first timber hybrid office tower has been officially opened by Planning Minister Rita Saffioti today.

GDI Property managing director, Stephen Burns, said the Westralia Square 2 building – situated on St George’s Terrace in the CBD – was already leased at 90 per cent capacity.

Inside Westralia Square 2Credit: GDI Property

“The timber hybrid construction meant we could use the existing engineering in place for the carpark underneath us and build higher and bigger than a standard concrete build. It also meant less mess, quicker build times and an embodied carbon saving of about 70 per cent compared to a concrete equivalent building,” he said.

Saffioti said she expected the building to be the first of many timber hybrid constructions, with the method allowing developers to build on top of multi-level car parks to eliminate “dead spaces”.

“It’s architecturally brilliant,” she said.

“You can build it faster, and you can build a lot off-site… and it has far less impact on the environment.”

The grieving father of a toddler who died at Joondalup Health Campus days after doctors refused to run blood tests has refuted the findings of a review which cleared hospital staff of any wrongdoing.

Sandipan Dhar died in the hospital on March 24, just before his second birthday and more than one month after he began suffering a long-running mild fever following routine vaccinations.

Sandipan Dhar died aged 21 months.

His parents claimed they took their son to the GP four times, and the hospital twice in that time before a hospital X-ray revealed he had pneumonia.

By that stage, it was too late to save his life, with a post-mortem revealing the boy was also suffering from undiagnosed leukemia, or blood cancer.

A report into Sandipan’s care concluded that the clinical management during his two presentations to hospital “was appropriate and well managed”.

A nine-member panel which included an external independent paediatrician and an external emergency physician, agreed “there was nothing to specifically suggest Sandipan had an underlying leukaemia … therefore, the decision not to complete blood tests was appropriate”.

But Sandipan’s father Sanjoy Dhar today told reporters he didn’t understand how the hospital doctor who overrode a GP referral letter request to run a blood test on Sandipan had been cleared.

He claimed there was a “huge possibility” his son would still be with him today if he had received a blood test during his first visit.

Dhar plans to meet with the Health Minister later this week, and says he is considering taking legal action.

A land and river search is underway for a Perth woman who has been missing since the early hours of Saturday morning.

Adut Atem Kiir, 26, was last seen walking in the carpark outside The Point in East Perth around 2am on Saturday.

Adut Atem Kiir has not been seen for five days.Credit: WA Police

Her family and friends have not heard from her since, which is out of character.

Atem Kiir is described as approximately 185 centimetres tall, of slim build with black hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a black jumper, black pants and a headscarf.

Anyone with information is asked to contact police immediately.

Acting WA Premier Rita Saffioti continues to dodge questions about a convicted armed robber who is employed by the WA branch of construction union, the CFMEU.

Under new rules imposed by her Federal counterparts, CFMEU representatives with criminal records are no longer granted right-of-entry permits on Federally funded construction sites.

However, Saffioti refused to directly respond to whether WA member Nathan Fisher, a convicted armed robber, was welcome on state government projects.

“The feedback from the Master Builders’ Association and other parts of industry is that this union hasn’t been, or isn’t similar to what’s happened in other states,” she said.

“If people have evidence or allegations of criminal activity, I urge them to report that to the police.”

Saffioti also dodged questions about whether she had been in contact with the CFMEU since this masthead, The Australian Financial Review and 60 Minutes began exposing the union’s alleged ties to organised crime in the eastern states.

WA Liberal leader Libby Mettam claimed the WA Labor party was “beholden to the union movement”.

“Clearly the standard that has been set by federal colleagues as well as Labor leaders in Queensland, New South Wales, Tasmania and South Australia is much higher than the standard that Rita Saffioti and [Premier] Roger Cook are setting here,” she said.

Some education news now and a new Perth primary school that will feature a massive 240 parking bays and cater for 1000 students has been approved for development.

In December 2023, the state government announced funding for a $36.8 million public primary school in the City of Armadale’s new suburb of Hilbert.

The school will be built in two stages, with the first accommodating up to 540 students from kindergarten to year 6 upon opening in 2026.

If the school hits 1000 students, it will become one of the biggest in Perth with only four other primary schools over 1000 students as of 2023.

The two biggest schools, Brabham and Harrisdale, are both relatively new builds for the WA Education Department – opening in 2021 and 2016 respectively – and have catered for a huge growing population in their catchment areas.

The eastern corridor of Perth is one of the fastest-growing in terms of education needs.

Worksafe is investigating two unrelated workplace deaths which occurred yesterday.

In the first incident, a worker was killed while collecting a skip bin from the front yard of a residential property in Donnybrook around 8am.

In the second incident, a tree lopper was electrocuted when he came into contact with overhead high voltage power lines around 2pm.

WorkSafe Commissioner Sally North and Director of Energy Safety Saj Abdoolakhan both expressed their sincere condolences to the workers’ families, friends and workmates.

WA-based home builder BGC says it remains committed to completing unfinished homes as its cement division goes on the market.

The cementitious division – which includes BGC Asphalt, BGC Cement, BGC Concrete, BGC Quarries, BGC Transport and the company’s Materials Technology Centre – will be sold as a standalone business.

Brianna Murphy has been waiting nearly five years for her Bushmead terrace home to be completed with builder BGC.Credit: Claire Ottaviano

BGC chief executive Daniel Cooper said there would be no change to day-to-day operations during the sales process.

“For those customers who are building with us, I want to reassure you we remain firmly focused on completing your home as fast as possible,” he said.

Since ceasing new home orders in April 2023 to deal with a backlog of stalled builds, BGC has handed over more than 1800 homes with 90 per cent of their contracts now passed the lock-up stage.

BGC Contracting was put on the market in 2018 by the company’s family shareholders who decided to split BGC up after legal proceedings between the heirs of founder Len Buckeridge’s $2.5 billion estate.

The plasterboard and fibre cement division was also sold in 2023.