THEIR own fight is lost but members of Alfred Cove’s Striker Balance community action group won’t give up battling what they call the injustice of WA’s development assessment panel system.

This week Striker Balance organiser Geoff Pearson and supporters, along with MP Matt Taylor and Cr Nick Pazolli, attended a parliamentary committee to state their case, on the back of a 3619-signature petition presented to MPs.

The group remains deeply unhappy with the process that resulted in the approval of a multi-storey 84-unit complex for the old Striker Pavilion site.

Despite organising massive opposition, winning the support of local MPs and the council and pointing out how radically the development will reshape the area, the plans were approved by the local development assessments panel.

DAPs were introduced by the Barnett government to streamline major development applications, bypassing elected councils. Ninety-two per cent of all applications that have gone before the five-member panels (three members appointed, two drawn from the local council) have sailed through.

Melville council CEO Shayne Silcox also fronted the committee. Mr Pearson said Dr Silcox described the DAP system as “deeply flawed and left councils generally between a rock and a hard place”.

“I was pleased to see that the committee were obviously as astonished, confused [and] bewildered at the Kitchener Road decision and the excessive use of discretionary powers as we all have been,” Mr Pearson said.

Round two is next Wednesday at 10.15am when members of the DAP that made the Striker decision will front the committee to answer questions.

In a closing message to the vast mailing list taking on the DAPs, Mr Pearson told supporters “what will this all achieve? We do not know, but we are finally being listened to, and with us sitting there as silent witnesses, those who have done this to us will be forced to answer.”

by DAVID BELL