ANTHONY BROWN came to Fremantle to live 10 years ago. In this week’s THINKING ALLOWED says the place leaves much to be desired and is failing to live up to its great promise, in large part because of “self-interested left-wing loonies”.

THE front page of the Herald (February 27, 2016) is plastered with pictures and comments from a bunch of left-wing / green activists, including the Fremantle mayor and several Fremantle councillors, declaring they are going to tear up signed contracts with national companies that have a somewhat tenuous relationship with providing legitimate services to the federal government in managing detention centres.

We the ratepayers of Fremantle have not been asked our opinions regarding this and one wonders who is going to pay the army of lawyers that will spend months wrangling over this ridiculous notion.

I have a message for these elected representatives of the ratepayers of Fremantle — pull your heads in.

We all know you are after various state and federal government seats, so do this campaigning with your own money on your own time.

Awash with crime

The city of Fremantle is awash with crime. There are houses such as that in Solomon Street, Beaconsfield, that is a drug-dealing hub, that attracts people from all over Fremantle who have committed multiple crimes to enable them to pay for a fix.

There is a derelict state housing block of flats that needs to be demolished and rebuilt, but when? The state housing complex in Beach Street houses several drug dealers, also adding to the vast numbers of burglaries, break-ins, car jackings and muggings in Fremantle.

Having spoken to the security manager of the largest department store left in Fremantle yesterday, he says people are just walking out of the store with stolen goods and they are powerless to touch them due to the soft, politically correct laws now in place.

The council, unable to eliminate the plethora of professional beggars littering the streets has, in its wisdom, decided to pay them with our ratepayers’ money, obviously forgetting to ask our opinion of this ridiculous profligacy.

It comes as no surprise that our already statewide highest rates are going even higher, the vast number of church-owned West End properties running a profit, the university paying no rates obviously doesn’t help .

The youth-minded mayor has used our money to ingratiate himself with the skateboard community, providing a skate park, but we still have to endure mobs of unruly skate people in Cantonment Street who block the path, illegally park, play loud music and litter the area with empty beer, soft drink bottles and food packets. Supplying a bin to the area would seem a good idea .

Fremantle has lost the Dockers, Myer, Sussan, Harvey Norman, McDonald’s, Dome, Spotlight, Betts, the big Victoria Quay redevelopment, the Hilton Hotel has been placed on hold, vast areas of empty buildings litter the East End, with expired development applications in the windows, large tracts of fenced-off sand, the derelict woolstores on Elder Place is falling down, filled with rats, squatters, rubbish and plastered in illegal rock band posters, the graffiti, and bogans doing hoon laps in noisy hot rods and motorbikes, deterring tourists, considered harmless fun by our immature mayor, these are the real issues the councillors are elected to fix and the mayor is paid to concentrate on.

I despair at the impression the thousands of cruise boat passengers get when they disembark in Fremantle. No welcoming signs, no shops selling local wares, no refreshments available other than a burger joint, even after they have to drag their bags over a 500-metre pedestrian bridge, they must feel just like the thousands of migrants who landed here after the Second World War, where the hell are we? They are surrounded by derelict buildings and car parks.

Everybody talks about a welcoming hospitality precinct on Victoria Quay but that’s as far as it gets, sadly.

It is obvious the cafe strip on South Terrace should be a pedestrian mall from Thursday 6pm until Sunday midnight. There should be street stalls and street performers and a welcoming vibe to attract families to Fremantle, it should not be a drag strip. All the businesses can be restocked from streets at the rear.

During the America’s Cup there was a steam train running from the Fremantle station south to the station at the sailing club, with the new developments at South Beach this tourist feature should be re- introduced to attract more families to Fremantle and areas south.

Jousting must stop

The container facility that chokes Fremantle with trucks and old noisy polluting diesel cargo trains must be moved, as soon as possible, the political jousting must stop and something must be done, as the port facilities are currently for sale it is an opportune time, the money and time wasted rejecting the visionary Len Buckeridge’s plans for another port should be a salutory lesson to the government.

There are many things wrong with Fremantle, some easily fixed, some will take longer, but they must be done.

But, oh no, our beloved councillors and well-paid mayor are trying to fix problems 5000km away, that the Labor Party created, and is being managed as best as possible by the federal government, despite a rag tag bunch of left-wing loonies with nothing better to do than try to prevent them.

I am a bitterly disappointed resident and ratepayer of Fremantle. I came here 10 years ago to enjoy the many great features of this city and now it is a crime-ridden, graffiti scrawled ghetto run by a bunch of self-interested nobodies keen to promote their political careers and they don’t give a damn about Fremantle and its residents.

I am not alone.