Things get hot when the state teams up with property developers and tabloid media to roll a local council trying to preserve beachside crown land. Michael West reports.
Perth, Western Australia, might be 11,078 km from the Gaza Strip, but that hasn’t stopped Seven West Media from tarring a local mayor with the Hamas terrorist tag.
And the rest.
“Working as a journo at the ABC was one of the many things Fiona did before becoming Mayor of Nedlands,” wrote The West Australian scribbler Ben Harvey in Kerry Stokes’s daily. “It’s an unlikely career path, a bit like having a resume which starts with membership of Hamas and ends with being head of Mossad …”.
The West Australian newspaper is the Murdoch mini-me of the West, indeed now headed up by former editor of News Corp’s The Australian Chris Dore.
Its hatchet job on Argyle paraded the full suite of tabloid culture war targets: the “woke” ABC, greenies, a climate-progressive woman, the indigenous, the disabled … even Hamas.
Harvey finished with this bizarre crescendo, accusing the mayor of “Using Aboriginal politics and disability inclusiveness to justify making the lives of dying kids less pleasant”.
Who would want to make the lives of dying kids less pleasant? Nobody, that’s who.
Nedlands Mayor Fiona Argyle
It’s an epic pile-on by the Perth media and political elite, a smear-job whose central purpose is to develop Crown Land for private purposes.
On one side, you have the Nedlands City Council and Mayor Fiona Argyle trying to protect Crown land. On the other, the corporate media – talkback and tabloid – property developers preying on the Class A nature reserve in the plush beachside suburb of Swanbourne, a hospital foundation and state government types like Local Government Minister Hannah Beazley.
The gist of the utterly puerile media coverage and political attacks is that the Nedlands Council and its mayor are “heartless” for blocking the development of a children’s hospice on the Class A nature reserve.
Yet the question nobody seems to be addressing is:
why could they not build the hospice somewhere else?
Anywhere else. Say on land that was not the most environmentally protected type of Crown land? And is the hospice a stalking horse for further developments?
The West Australian
Ian Cambell: Perth Children’s Hospital Foundation
Questions were put to Ian Campbell for this story. Campbell is a Brookfield executive and chairman of the Perth Children’s Hospital Foundation which is behind the development.
Yet there was no response by Campbell or his media team. Instead, the Foundation’s media proxy WA News concluded that Argyle and her council were deliberately trying to make “the lives of dying kids less pleasant”.
Argyle’s point is clear, she is doing her job, which is to protect Nedlands’ most precious nature reserves from development. Nedlands Council is the Management Body for the land.
“The top property developers in the state [Hespera] are also behind this,” Argyle told MWM.
“This has become disgracefully political. In 2020, they [the Hospital Foundation with the help WA politicians] excised 6,000sqm off the community; prime land with ocean views, for their hospice.
“Now they want more land, I said no. Aboriginal elders have not been consulted, it is the only public access to the beach, with a 40,000 year Whadjuck Noongar trail. The land is priceless. Class A has the highest protection of all … it is for the community, for future generations, not for profits.”
Developers mute
One question local residents have is what else is on the agenda for the property developers and their political patrons? Were there plans to do more development in the areas adjacent to the land in question? No response was forthcoming from Ian Campbell and the Perth Children’s Hospital Foundation.
Nor did Hannah Beazley respond to questions as to why the hospice issue was being conflated with the performance of the Council in other matters.
At a Nedlands Council meeting on Tuesday evening, a local resident blasted the Health Department for joining with the developers to roll the Council over the hospice land grab.
“The Health Department’s allegations against Nedlands Council are totally unfounded,” Peter Taranto told the meeting.
“How can the public have any confidence in the Health Department and the government when they have permitted unfounded allegations made against Nedlands Council as Management Body of the Allen Park Crown reserves to be perpetuated in the media; and when the Health Department has allowed those allegations to be conflated with other matters of Council business as the basis for sacking of the Council or removing it as Management Body?
Beazley not responding
Local Government Minister Minister Hannah Beazley
Questions were put by MWM to Beazley (left) but there was no response.
According to Taranto, who has reviewed all the minutes of meetings and closely monitored the performance of the Council, since 2020, the WA Health Department has “directly or indirectly made allegations that Nedlands has neglected certain parts of Allen Park’s Class A reserves; the same parts which the Health Department and its partner was intent on acquiring.
“The Health Department has also made allegations that Nedlands Council left those same reserves undeveloped, and that it has blocked the development of the children’s hospice.”
MWM will post the Minister’s response if or when it arrives. Beazley had warned on ABC Radio, Perth, that the Council could be placed into administration for its “repeated poor behaviour”.
“I find it quite extraordinary, to be honest, in terms of a stance to take of not supporting our sick and dying children and giving them a hospice in the central area and a beautiful nature area next door that would also be open to the community.”
There must be few campaign tools more heart-rending than a children’s hospice for developers to push the case for privatisation of environmentally protected Crown land but the Nedlands case is the thin end of the wedge. The question is, what’s next?
Politically, the conflict of interest between developers and politicians in situations such as these is palpable. The developers get the money and the politicians get the glory of a public interest project to wave about for votes.
Michael West established Michael West Media in 2016 to focus on journalism of high public interest, particularly the rising power of corporations over democracy. West was formerly a journalist and editor with Fairfax newspapers, a columnist for News Corp and even, once, a stockbroker.