🍻 Perth Hills Pub Test WRAP-UP 🍻

It’s poll-time people: Does the WAPC pass the pub test?

Unfortunately I can't transfer the Facebook poll to this blog but I've posted the Pub Test summary below. If you can please pop over to Facebook and vote.

Does the WAPC pass the Pub Test? Will we get a fair go? The Australian 2020 bushfire season is teaching us that planning in this country IS BROKEN. It’s been business-as-usual and urban sprawl for decades... It’s time to call out the BUSINE$$ of property development with Government and it ENDS with North $toneville SP-34.

Here’s a recap (for a detailed summary with references see previous posts):

🍺 David Caddy: Chairman of the WA Planning Commission. ALSO...

Member of the Anglican Perth Diocese Architectural Advisory Committee (the Anglican Church owns the North Stoneville land). ALSO David’s wife Kathleen is an Anglican Synod member.

🍺 Andrew Macliver: DAP Specialist Member of the Planning Commission. ALSO...

Presides over referred Development Approval applications as part of Dept of Planning, Lands and Heritage's Development Assessment Panels.ALSO...on the same Anglican Committee as David Caddy.

🍺 Jane Bennett: WA Planning Commission member. ALSO...

Prominent leadership positions on development-aligned organisations such as: UDIA (Urban Development Institute of Australia), CLE Town Planning + Design, (with Satterley interests), Landcorp, and MRA.

🍺 Lino Lacomella: Member of the WAPC Statutory Planning Committee. ALSO...

Property Council WA deputy then executive director 2009-July 2018. Property Council of WA represents the interests of the WA property industry. ALSO links to Satterley’s Austin Lakes development.

🍺 Peter Ciemitis: RobertsDay Principal, and member of the Government’s State Design Review Panel. ALSO…Works currently and directly with Satterley on SP34 North Stoneville.

🍺 UDIA Awards: Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) Annual Awards. ALSO…

The West Australian Planning commission is a platinum sponsor of the awards…

In Sept 2019, Satterley Property Group received 6 UDIA awards and Satterley’s Ray Stokes (and former WAPC secretary) got life membership.

🍺 Belinda Moharich: Deputy Chairman of the WAPC. ALSO…

Principal lawyer at Moharich & More, Belinda Moharich provides legal advice and representation at the State Administrative Tribunal to developers.

Our Pub Test Challenge has not been put on FaceBook to entertain and amuse us. This has been a deadly serious campaign to alert you - our COMMUNITY, to perceived and potential conflicts and biases in decision-making processes of the WAPC.

Our community is staring down the barrel of a DANGEROUS and DESTRUCTIVE PLANNING DISASTER that could cost us our environment, our homes, our lives. Right now almost 3,000 Australians are homeless in the wake of the on-going bushfire catastrophe. 29 people died. This awful crisis highlights the critical importance of integrity in the significant decision-making process for planning in fire prone regions - just like North Stoneville.

Our Pub Tests have asked: Will the WAPC give our community a FAIR GO and can we truly TRUST the process - and the people who deliver it?

☞The WAPC’s own Governance Guide states that ‘perceptions do matter’ (page 20). We agree - 100%. REF: https://www.dplh.wa.gov.au/getmedia/a85b7521-b4c3-4d97-85f4-31432d78da28/WAPC-Governance-Guide-2019

We’ve taken our concerns to the highest levels - Planning Minister Rita Saffioti, WA Governor Kim Beazley, and local member Matthew Hughes - who continues to be our staunch supporter.

We’ve lodged formal complaints with the WA Ombudsman. We continue to wait for the outcome.

We understand Premier McGowan is 'aware', and we have told, in person, Federal Cabinet Minister and member for Hasluck, Ken Wyatt.

We will not sit back while profits are put ahead of people.

We will demand answers to questions our Pub tests have raised.

In this pre-election year - stick with us - this is just the start...

P.S. We are not the first to have concerns about the WAPC: https://www.watoday.com.au/national/western-australia/highly-demoralising-how-people-get-trapped-in-perth-s-planning-web-20190514-p51n66.html

Pub Test #7

That’s right folks, we have another pub test challenge… we’re back at the bar for number SEVEN 😲

Our previous post reached almost 11,000 of you - so we know this issue is hitting home - and hard.

Meet Belinda Moharich - Deputy Chair of the WA Planning Commi$$ion... (WAPC)

The PLANNING DISASTER - otherwise known as North $toneville SP34 is being considered by WAPC planners right now! The WAPC extended their deliberations to April 30 because the Structure Plan is apparently ‘complex in nature’. We knew that right…?

Anyway…..back to Belinda: Belinda’s legal firm provides legal advice to developers at the State Administrative Tribunal (SAT)…. So how does this work? The SAT website says:

“The Tribunal is the primary place for the review of decisions made by Government agencies, public officials and local governments. It also makes a wide variety of original decisions.”

...So… does Belinda help developers who have not been successful at the WAPC to then figure out how to have $ucce$$ at WAPC…? As Deputy Chair of the WAPC, Belinda would definitely know how it all works.

Is a “fair go” even possible at this point….? Is this REALLY how the “busine$$” of planning is carried out? Could there be so many conflicted members that the whole commi$$ion might need to abstain from making a decision?

What do you thINC?

Please tell us by commenting… Remember - all who need to hear this are listening! 😉

References:

https://www.sat.justice.wa.gov.au

https://moharichandmore.com.au

The letter The West refused to publish!

Save Perth Hills uses every avenue possible to inform people of the PLANNING DISASTER looming for our community if North $toneville gets the go-ahead.

But The West Australian slams the door in our face - constantly. You draw your own conclusions as to why.

This paper has, again, ignored an important letter to The Editor from Save Perth Hills asking Planning Minister Rita Saffioti to activate DISASTER PREPAREDNESS by calling an immediate halt to urban developments in fire prone areas, like ours, until they can be properly assessed against the lessons of this tragic fire season.

Importantly this letter acknowledges a significant anniversary for us: the January 12th 2014 Stoneville-Parkerville fires.

Today’s West dedicates pages to the Royal Family’s dramas - but our letter, on which lives may depend, was overlooked. As usual.

So here it is - for everyone for whom it matters - and that’s everyone who lives in fire prone communities, just like ours.

#AnthonydeCeglie (The West’s editor)

#MarkMcGowan

#RitaSaffioti

#MatthewHughes

#DavidCaddy

#NigelSatterley

#KayGoldsworthy

TO: The Editor, The West Australian Newspaper (for publication Saturday Jan 11)

RE: Community calls for a moratorium on development in fire prone regions – on the anniversary of the Stoneville-Parkerville Fires.

Dear Editor,

Six years ago tomorrow (January 12, 2014), fires destroyed 57 homes in Stoneville and Parkerville in Mundaring Shire – WA’s highest fire risk shire. Many in our community have not recovered.

While unprecedented fires burn across Australia, our Hills’ community is fighting plans by the Anglican Church to convert 555-hectares at North Stoneville into a ‘suburban townsite’ for more than 4,000 people - in the Extreme Fire Zone of the 2014 fires and on-site of the 2008 fire in which more property was lost.

4,000 panicked people cannot be evacuated safely – along with 2,000 existing locals, horse floats and trailers, on just two rural road exits. One road, at least, will be comprised by fire. Unlike NSW’s Batemans Bay, we don’t have a beach to shelter next door - we have the potentially volatile John Forrest National Park.

So, while the Prime Minister considers a Royal Commission into Australia’s summer of deadly fires, we call on Planning Minister Rita Saffioti to impose an immediate moratorium on urban development in proven bushfire-prone areas, like Stoneville, to avoid an Eastern States’ scale of disaster here.

Now is not the time to consider complex proposals like North Stoneville, in highly volatile environments, with major safety concerns, while fires burn and destroy communities just like ours, in environments just like ours, around the country.

There are significant lessons to learn from these tragic fires that require us to pause and re-assess, collectively, about how we might safely plan communities in fire-prone regions, given our ‘new norm’ of challenging – and deadly conditions.

Paige McNeil: Chairperson Save Perth Hills Inc.