Our Tiger?

AFTER reading your article “Wave Banksias Goodbye” (Herald, December 3, 2022) I took your journalist’s advice and on the weekend viewed the Black Cockatoo Crisis documentary at the Luna Theatre.

This is something that all Western Australians should see including our politicians and all those that advocate electric vehicles.

With the rape and pillage of our iconic Western Australian bush for urbanisation on the coastal plain and chasing minerals (lithium and bauxite) within the Darling Scarp we are rapidly decimating our three species of black cockatoos.

The government’s decision to harvest the pine plantation on the Gnangara water mound has meant that this is also taking away a food source for the cockatoos that they have used for many years because of the clearing of their natural food sources.

One only has to go to Google maps and you can see the decimation of land from Yanchep though to Baldivis and throughout the Darling Scarp.

With the lack of natural food the cockatoos are now being killed on roads when they are eating grain spilt from trucks and it has been found in the Moora area they are eating food that is contaminated and also killing them off.

As one who was bought up around the Jandakot area, not only have the cockatoos disappeared but untold other bird species and flora such as banksias (food source for cockatoos) spider, donkey and enamel orchids and mammals including the quenda – which one developer in Hammond Park had the audacity to name their subdivision after. 

After the bulldozers had been through the whole area it was like a desert so there were no quendas left! 

Studies have shown that the Baudin’s cockatoo, one of the three black cockatoo species, is down to only 6,000 birds and the documentary claimed we will kiss all the black cockatoos goodbye within the next 20 years.

Is this going to be like the Tasmanian tiger and after the fauna and flora are extinct we wish we had saved them?

Albert Baker
Melville

Galahs

WHY do they want to act like galahs and make waves? 

They should really Knock (this) Way out on Princep(ul) (or be) Road out of town. “Wave Banksias Goodbye” (Herald, December 3, 2022).

This is not about surf waves – we have ample of those and real surfers are used to the idea that the waves are not always there. It is the uncertainty of when and where the waves will be, and the absolute thrill when they are wild. 

The last wave park effort was washed out because it privatised part of our river foreshore and dispossessed other sport and impacted the river eco system. 

This latest attempt will again seriously impact our diminishing environment, particularly in relation to our black cockatoo population.  

Surely the government and these entrepreneurs can find a less controversial location. If not this will be another cock(up)too.

Jim Meckelburg
Beaconsfield

JCRAP

BASED on the current town planning scheme, we recently saw Fremantle council refuse approval for a developer to build a massively oversized new hotel.

We then witnessed a three-person tribunal ignore this elected body’s decision and its stated reasons to approve the building. 

Joint Development Assessment Panels were ostensibly established to allow justifiable development in a more timely manner; to prevent councils from unreasonably holding up or squashing valid proposals.

But the devil lies in the detail of course. One-sided approval numbers tell the story. The JDAP process undeniably favours the applicants. 

JDAP members are demonstrably ignoring planning scheme requirements.

The orderly statutory process, which requires local authorities to create and regularly revise/update their local government planning schemes, is being sabotaged in the name of so-called “efficiency”.

It’s time for ratepayers to appreciate the fact that our local government bodies are being bypassed. It’s time for us to demand an end to the JDAP system. 

Fremantle Planning Scheme No 4 is the result of decades of community and professional struggle, input and plain hard work. 

It comes out of historic planning policies developed and agreed upon in the 80s and 90s, and contemporary attitudes and strategies. 

Imbedded within it is a long-term plan; a future Fremantle which sits harmoniously alongside the past and the present. It may not be perfect but it’s designed to produce far better outcomes than those resulting from strangers riding into town for five minutes, and laying down their wild-west version of the law.

Stand up and shout out Freo people…….No more JDAP!!

Carl Payne
White Gum Valley