You can Commbank on it

Regarding your front-page article last week (“Anger as branch goes,” Herald, July 4).

People, please – give the Commonwealth Bank a break.

They reported a half-year cash profit of only $5.45 billion for the six months ending December 31, 2025. This is just a 6 per cent increase over the previous corresponding period.

For the full financial year, CBA posted a net profit of barely $10.13 billion.

Times are tough.

Bank CEO Matt Comyn has a fixed base salary of only AU$2.85 million, and for the full financial year, his total pay barely reaches AU$8.5 million.

We need to be more understanding, sympathetic.

Carl Payne
White Gum Valley

The Price of Passion

THE projector gets switched on, only for one team, no other. 

Packed pub, no seats, the Fremantle Dockers are playing and The Patio in Freo is the place to be. 

Sitting around the table, Guinness and Swan Draught, the most invigorating game against the Cats. 

As an Eagles supporter myself, I actually don’t go for the Dockers, however I tend to support them in hopes of a grand final game, and pray on another humiliating loss at the G. 

This is my experience with footy; I go to the games every now and then, but $80 a ticket can be quite steep, and the pub is almost a better place to watch it.

The sense of belonging in a Freo pub, watching the Dockers play is a small insight to the cultural impact sports can have on a nation. 

It is our awkward small talk go-to – “did you see the game?” it is our backbone of competition and rivalry which fuels our community spirit. 

Who owns this spirit? Who has trademarkable rights to “Australian Rules Football”? Who controls Australia’s favourite past time? 

These questions are ones which all have answers too. 

The AFL Commission owns it. 

Andrew Dillon, the Chief Executive Officer of The Australian Football League Commission owns Australia’s passion.

If one person, board or organisation can have a stranglehold on a good that is so valuable, where are the guardrails for an organisation to not exploit it’s consumers?

I mean, it’s not like the AFL has any competitors in the field of Aussie rules football, it is – in economic terms – a pure monopoly. 

However, these monopolistic organisations surely have you, the fans, in mind; after all they are a non-for-profit, right?

Well, the 2026 FIFA world cup, another notorious non-for-profit is raking in 18.4 billion AUD in the 2026 World Cup with the ticket prices exceeding $30,000 and expensive ticket prices reaching millions.

So, it turns out when you have a monopoly on something that people’s lives are built on, you can end up charging them whatever you want, as after all it’s a “free market”. 

It is just lovely to see tech billionaires, a trillionaire, and political officials take front row seats at the World Cup when the true fans are back home. 

But is there an answer to this? Sadly, not really.

Like all things, we must endure the reigns of a free market where the popularity dictates the price. 

You might think, well as a non-for-profit, can’t they just charge reasonable tickets – $20 to a footy match and $100 to a World Cup match doesn’t seem too bad for me. 

However, re-sellers make this merely impossible and the fabricated low price isn’t actually feasible with the high demand for the tickets, thus re-sellers snatch up all the tickets and fling them off at a thousand times the price. 

Now, I actually don’t think the AFL is too bad. 

Just as a broke uni student, going to the games is a bit much for me. 

But, FIFA serves as a cautionary tale for what can happen when a company owns literal passion, happiness and belonging.

Therefore, for the remainder of the footy season, I am going to The Patio and lament in Fremantle’s winnings as a secret Eagles supporter in enemy territory. 

I will pay about $70 worth of beer and wine, not to mention $50 on food and $100 on the parking ticket I got because I didn’t realise The Patio carpark was council property. 

Whichever parking intendant is checking The Patio carpark on a Thursday night when Freo are playing, count your days.

I might just stay at home.

Charles Mavrick
Willeton

Banksia loss greater than the Amazon

I WRITE in response to the Herald article “Bushland to go as Melville backs oval” and the following comments attributed to Cr Jennifer Spanbroek: “Let’s be clear here; we are not looking at removing part of the Amazon forest nor Queensland’s Daintree forest.”

With respect, that comparison demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of the rarity of the Banksia woodland proposed to be cleared at John Connell Reserve.

Since European settlement, approximately 80–83 per cent of the Amazon rainforest remains intact. Around 90 per cent of the Daintree rainforest and roughly half of its lowland rainforest also survive.

By contrast, Western Australia has lost around 60 per cent of its Banksia woodlands, while less than 28 per cent remains in the Perth metropolitan area. 

In other words, Perth has lost over 70 per cent of this unique ecosystem — a far greater proportion than has been lost from either the Amazon or Daintree.

The area earmarked for clearing was identified in a 2021 City of Melville officer report as a Threatened Ecological Community and provides important habitat for endangered black cockatoos. 

Far from being insignificant, it is one of the most depleted and vulnerable ecosystems in our region.

Importantly, this is not a choice between sport and the environment. 

The community overwhelmingly supports improved sporting facilities at John Connell Reserve. 

The question is whether those facilities must come at the expense of irreplaceable bushland when a viable alternative exists.

Just 50 metres away lies the 13-hectare former tip site, earmarked for remediation and redevelopment for more than 25 years. 

Redeveloping this area as part of the John Connell Reserve Master Plan would provide expanded sporting facilities, public open space and long-term value for ratepayers while protecting the remaining Banksia woodland.

The current proposal would spend $4.7 million clearing threatened habitat to create what many residents see as Australia’s most expensive patch of lawn.

The alternative is a visionary, long-term solution that delivers both community infrastructure and environmental protection.

So Cr Spanbroek is correct about one thing: this is not the Amazon or the Daintree. In Perth, where less than 28 per cent of our Banksia woodlands remain, this habitat is arguably even rarer.

The City should stop looking for reasons to clear it and start showing the leadership needed to deliver the Master Plan the community deserves.

Jason Meotti

Bull Creek

Cheap, hurtful and not appreciated

THE other day I went to my local chemist.

There was another female customer who was asking a staff member – of long standing I might add – for some assistance. 

He showed her where to look on the shelf. 

Instead of hearing “Thank you” I heard her say to him that he was doing well to locate the item and asking how long had he been in the country?

Obviously, this customer was new to this particular chemist. 

Perhaps she was new to Fremantle?

Just because a person looks different in features to yourself does not mean that they have just arrived in the country and so what if they had?

For all she knew, the chemist might have been born here.

But that is not the issue.

It was a cheap and hurtful remark that was not asked for and inappropriate.

My only regret is that I didn’t say anything to her. 

In Fremantle, for the most part, we do treat each other with respect especially when someone is offering to help us. 

We do not welcome this kind of behaviour in our city.

Judith Murray
Fremantle

Heritage is layered, not competing

CONTRARY to John Dowson’s perspective in “Don’t allow one culture to build over another,” (Herald Thinking Allowed, May 30) many contemporary heritage professionals understand heritage as layered rather than competing—where multiple histories coexist within the same place rather than one replacing another.

Long before the colonial heritage of the former site of St John’s Church in the 1840s, this area held over 45,000 years of Whadjuk Noongar cultural significance. 

It was a site of Manjaree gatherings, where the 14 Noongar clans came together for marriage, trade, ceremony, and storytelling over millennia.

The proposed artwork, Kaari Boyak Naarny by Sharyn Egan and Simon Gilby, alongside the former St John’s Church site, reflects this layered heritage and speaks to a broader journey of reconciliation at the heart of Fremantle, in Walyalup Koort.

The 1832 colonial artwork, View of Fremantle by J Wilson, originates from a period marked by violent frontier conflict, when British settlers forcibly displaced Whadjuk Noongar people from their lands. 

Leaders Yagan and Midgegooroo were outlawed by governor James Stirling and later killed, and in 1834 the Pinjarra Massacre saw the killing of many Noongar people, marking a deeply painful chapter in our shared history.

Wilson’s artwork depicts the early colonial settlement built over the Manjaree ceremonial, meeting, trading, and spiritually significant sites at Walyalup. 

The landscape also offers a rare glimpse into important Noongar places: Wadjemup (Rottnest Island), a place of spirits and later an Aboriginal prison (1838–1931), where many Aboriginal people died in custody; freshwater sources that sustained gatherings for millennia; and Derbal Yerrigan, where the river meets the sea, a place of deep cultural meaning. 

The natural limestone formations and crossings along Noongar songlines were later altered to enable the development of Fremantle Port and rail infrastructure.

In this historical context of loss and ongoing reconciliation, the coexistence of Kaari Boyak Naarny with the former St John’s Church site represents, in my view, an act of generosity, respect, and harmony in Walyalup Koort.

Sharon Collins
North Fremantle

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