We leave you, unfortunately, with a report that Rebecca Peppiatt has just filed from the courts – a jury has just found a Perth man guilty of bludgeoning his eight-months-pregnant lover to death.
Thanks for following along today, readers, we’ll be back tomorrow.
In a milestone for the transition to zero-emission public transport in Western Australia, the first electric bus to be manufactured as part of a joint multimillion-dollar federal and state government initiative has now been completed.
The federal government has committed $125 million toward electric bus charging infrastructure in Perth, combined with a $125 million commitment from the state for the acquisition of 130 locally manufactured electric buses.
CAT services in the city will include 18 electric buses by 2025.Credit: Hamish Hastie
The investment will also include the installation of charging infrastructure at key depots and major upgrades to manufacturing facilities to support future production.
The bus is now undergoing testing and commissioning and is expected to enter services in the next two months. It will be one of 18 electric buses used on the CBD CAT routes.
All 18 are expected to be in service by the middle of next year, able to travel up to 300 kilometres on a single charge.
Analysis undertaken by the state government shows the cost to operate an electric bus across its 18-year service life is around $1 million less than the current diesel buses.
Premier Roger Cook said the plan was to cut emissions, bust congestion and provide affordable public transport while creating local jobs and building the skilled workforce for the future.
We also heard today that the City of Melville’s carpool fleet has four new electric vehicles and charging infrastructure supported through state government grant funding as the next step towards their target of being carbon-neutral by 2030.
A Morley woman has been fined $6000 and banned from owning animals for five years after she left her three Jack Russell terriers – two under the age of 12 months – without food or water for days.
An RSPCA inspector attended the home in late January after reports the offender’s dogs Girl, Laddie, and Boi had been locked inside during a heatwave.
One of the Jack Russell terriers that was left without food or water.Credit: RSPCA WA
Through the property’s windows the inspector saw that, while the dogs seemed in fair condition, there was a build-up of faeces and no visible available food or water.
The Perth Magistrates Court heard on Friday the woman had told the inspector at the time she was in regional WA, but also claimed she had arranged appropriate care.
RSPCA WA inspector manager Kylie Green said the dogs would have experienced great distress locked away during the hottest period of the year.
“There is no excuse for leaving your pet locked in a house for an extended period of time,” she said.
“These dogs fully relied on their owner to care for them and she dismally failed them.”
In sentencing, Magistrate Sandra De Maio said the dogs suffered significant distress with the two puppies being especially vulnerable because of their age.
The offender was ordered to pay $853.70 in legal and court costs and a reimbursement of $1642 to the RSPCA for vet costs.
Health Minister Amber-Jade Sanderson has just announced she has requested the state’s health department join a review of Joondalup Health Campus’ paediatric services.
Sanderson has also vowed to look at the waning rates of bulk-billing in Perth’s north after the death of toddler Sandipan Dhar.
Sanderson has vowed to look into declining bulk billing rates.Credit: 9 News Perth
The external review, announced by Ramsay Health Care on Thursday, will be undertaken by independent specialists from the eastern states and could take several months.
The Joondalup hospital came under fire last week after the parents of 21-month-old Sandipan Dhar claimed their son died of leukemia after they were repeatedly refused blood tests for his long-running fever.
The review announcement also comes amid revelations the hospital’s staff did not believe 10-year-old Olivia Bakranic-Fowler had been bitten by a tiger snake, forcing her mother to travel to Perth Children’s Hospital for anti-venom.
Sanderson said while the two cases were distinctly different, it was clear the parents of both children did not feel that they were being heard.
“It is my view as a parent, as the Minister, that parents’ concerns need to be seriously taken into consideration,” she said.
“Parents know their children better and they generally know if it’s a sniffle or an underlying virus or something more serious.”
Sanderson said the government would also look at what more could be done to support general practice in the Joondalup area, given the busy hospital was servicing a fast-growing region where bulk-billing services were almost non-existent.
The Crime and Corruption Commission has found cases of nepotism and misconduct by two managers at Main Roads WA, who hired an unqualified relative and extensively misused their company card.
In 2021, Main Roads received a complaint alleging two managers (Manager A and B) had used their positions to ensure Manager A’s relative received a contract.
An internal investigation revealed Manager B sent his proposal for additional staff which contained detailed requirements of the position to Manager A.
This information was then forwarded to the relative so they could craft their resume with false and misleading information to give the appearance they had the necessary skills and experience for the role.
The managers also booked training for the family member before they had even submitted their resume. No one else was interviewed for the job despite multiple other suitable applicants.
Further issues relating to Manager B’s purchasing activities were uncovered. They had spent around $145,000 on technology purchases in just over two-years.
They also engaged an external contractor with no prior experience to build devices for a Main Roads project with no approval apart from a verbal discussion.
At least five devices were built, costing $2500 and then $6500 each.
Both managers denied the allegations and tried to provide explanations that were discredited by witnesses.
Manager A received a written warning and further training and Manager B resigned before the end of the investigation and no findings were made.
The Commission reviewed the findings and raised further concern surrounding Manager B’s credit card use.
It also found Main Roads had overlooked the broader organisational factors that enabled the wrongdoing and highlighted the lack of oversight and the need to review the existing internal controls within the department.
Main Roads have now outlined various actions and processes they have implemented to address the Commission’s concerns.
Back again to politics, Greens MLC Brad Pettitt has called on the state government to explain the delay to a highly anticipated report from the state’s year-long domestic gas inquiry, claiming it looked “dodgy”.
On Wednesday, it was confirmed the Economics and Industry Standing Committee had postponed the release of its final report, which was due to be tabled in parliament on Thursday.
Pettitt urged the state government and Premier to come clean about the eleventh-hour delay.Credit: Nathan Hondros
The report is now not expected to be made public until August.
Pettitt urged the state government and Premier Roger Cook to come clean about the eleventh-hour delay, claiming that from the outside “it looks dodgy”.
Here’s what he had to say:
This inquiry will deliver decisions that impact some of the most powerful companies in Western Australia, companies who have very high-powered lobbyists working for them including former members of this government and even the former Premier.
We are talking about decisions that could be worth hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars.
The government must be transparent with the Western Australian public: what pressures have they come under to delay and revise the final report, and from who?
The committee indicated the final iteration of the report had been delayed to allow members additional time to “digest” the high volume of evidence received during the inquiry.
Shadow Fisheries Minister Colin de Grussa has today tabled a petition in parliament calling for the proposed South Coast Marine Park to be halted.
The park would span 1000 kilometres of the Great Southern Reef, from Bremer Bay to the South Australian border.
Sea lions call the area of the proposed marine park home.Credit: UWA Marine Futures Lab
The petition, with 5,860 signatories, has called for a parliamentary inquiry into whether the state government has adhered to the relevant statutory requirements, the extent of influence wielded by external lobby groups on the planning process and the scientific and socio-economic data and research that underpin the management plans for the four proposed sites included in the park.
De Grussa said the whole process had been a train wreck from the beginning.
“The whole thing started out with a quick and dirty public consultation process,” he said.
“It wasn’t worth the time and money for the state government to gain a proper understanding of the social and economic impact the proposed marine parks would have on the livelihoods and wellbeing of communities such as Esperance.”
A state government spokesman said at present, less than 1 per cent of WA’s south coast was protected by marine parks and the government aimed for the new one to rival Ningaloo and the Great Barrier Reef (which are both World Heritage Listed).
You can read more from the state government, and the opinion of scientists, here.
A regional team who protected their small town from an active shooter and a tenacious detective sergeant who achieved justice for a long-suffering victim of domestic violence have received the top honours at this morning’s WA Police Force Recognition of Excellence Awards.
Kellerberrin Police Station received the Brilliance in Policing team award for their response to active shooter, Lachlan Bowles, 25, shooting dead a colleague, Terry Czernowski in September 2023, before going on the run armed with a gun and shooting at a man in a passing vehicle.
WA Police Detective Sergeant Annette Herod won the Brilliance in Policing individual award.Credit: WA Police
Bowles was found in a paddock, wearing camouflage clothing and waving a Nazi flag. After hours of police negotiations, he turned the gun on himself and took his own life.
WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch thanked the local policing team for protecting the community that day.
“Those officers who responded to that active armed offender on that day, no doubt thought about the dangers they were facing, about their own humanity, their own families - how they might feel if they were injured and killed, and I know what was in the front of their mind, was keeping their community safe,” he said.
“They had to wait for the Tactical Response Group and Homicide Squad, who were all rolling out and coming, but for those first few hours, they were the only ones there keeping the community safe.”
The TRG were also recognised for their response that day.
Detective Sergeant Annette Herod won the Brilliance in Policing individual award for her decade-long commitment to save a woman who had been subject to horrific domestic violence. She has now managed to escape, and a man is before the courts.
“I think it’s very difficult for people to step forward, I think there’s a lot of thought processes that go through for victims of family violence … sometimes the option of walking away is perhaps worse in their eyes than staying, I think it takes enormous amounts of courage to get to that point,” she said.
Staying with the Nicheliving story and one of their customers Kathy Ellis has revealed she has resorted to living in a camper trailer with her two teenagers while waiting for her delayed home build.
Ellis claims she signed a contract with the company in December 2020, and work proceeded as planned for 12 months. But then the build stalled and the communication stopped.
Kathy Ellis has been forced to live in a camper trailer after her home was delayed.Credit: Jesinta Burton
The home reached lockup almost two years ago, a construction milestone where all external work is completed, but Ellis said there was no kitchen top, no flooring and water was now seeping into the home.
“I’m living in a camper trailer with two teenagers, no heating, no air conditioning, and I’m financially ruined,” Ellis told the press conference outside Parliament House.
“I went through [the home] two weeks ago and there was mould in every room. It’s disgusting.”
Ellis said she was living day to day and had now taken on a second job to make ends meet and pay the bills on a home she cannot yet live in.
She said she had sent Nicheliving 48 emails this year alone, but that her calls for assistance had fallen on deaf ears.
Ellis said she had penned a desperate letter to the office of Commerce Minister Sue Ellery pleading for help, which was met with a direction to contact 24-hour crisis support service Lifeline.
“And I called Lifeline because I needed help. It didn’t help,” she said.
We’re outside Parliament House now, where opposition leader Shane Love has fronted the media after calling for urgent action on what he described as an “unfolding disaster” in the state’s residential construction sector.
Love used the cover of parliamentary privilege to implore the state government and the industry regulator to conduct an urgent probe into builder Nicheliving and allegations it had left between 300 and 500 homes unfinished.
WA Opposition Leader Shane Love speaks outside parliament. Credit: Jesinta Burton
A short time later, he told the waiting press pack it was crucial Commerce Minister Sue Ellery join forces with the Building Commission to develop an urgent plan to address the situation.
And he scolded the state government’s response to his grievance, indicating it was woefully inadequate.
“This isn’t one or two people, there are hundreds,” he said.
“What we had today was a response to that problem which failed to address any of the concerns of the customers or a plan to address this issue with industry.
“This is really an unfolding disaster, and we need urgent action to move forward.”
He also insisted the state government’s $10 million interest-free loan facility, announced in January, was insufficient given the immense scale of the problem.
Love was flanked by half a dozen distressed Nicheliving customers, all of whom claimed they had been waiting years for the completion of their home.