Park shock

I WAS interested to read your front page news that the council workers will no longer have free parking.

I was taken aback that they had it in the first place.

It is many years since the WA Government mandated that all hospital workers must pay for theirw parking.

Nurses who start their shift before 7am, catering and other key support staff there at 5am all have to cough up to park. And this is 24 hours a day, seven days a week including public holidays.

Meanwhile council workers, 9-5 Monday-Friday, have free parking.

In good company with politicians parking free at Parliament it would seem.

David Cooke
Fremantle

If it ain’t broke…

SEAN HEFFERON seems intent on getting his message across – same letter two weeks in a row – that councillors and mayors should be limited to 12 and 8 years respectively, in the pursuit of diversity. 

What he doesn’t mention in the part of the Robson report that he refers to is that council elections also be proportional and compulsory and that all these factors would encourage diversity as in a greater number of candidates.  Although we don’t have proportional or compulsory voting in Fremantle every position is contested.

On that basis if we the voters re-elect councillors for periods longer than suggested it must be because we are happy with their performance and unconvinced by the other candidates’ profiles. 

Jim Meckelburg
Beaconsfield

Not a happy camper

LAST week John Dowson claimed, quote “The Tent City debacle involved several councillors using the homelessness issue for their personal political advantage”.

Well, we know for sure that one Fremantle councillor tried to make political capital out of the situation: Marija Vujcic.

 We know because mayoral candidate Vujcic received an adverse finding from the Local Government Standards Panel – for her baseless claim that the homeless camp was approved by former mayor Brad Pettitt and councillors Rachel Pemberton and Andrew Sullivan.

Unfortunately integrity and judgement came second.

As reported by the Herald, Cr Vujcic was required by the Standards Panel to publicly apologise to the three, and her apology was accepted at the 25 August council meeting.

So yes, John Dowson, there certainly is one councillor who used homelessness for ‘personal political advantage’.

Alan Payne
South Fremantle