Follow our live coverage here.
Follow our live coverage here.
The unmissable – some would say iconic – building housing Pot Black North Perth and Rosemount Bowl is set to change hands for a cool $3.7 million.
According to Ray White Commercial WA, the new owner is an investor who wants to secure the long-term presence of the building’s three tenants.
The building, adorned in the striking black-and-red pool hall branding, is instantly recognisable to anyone who has driven along Fitzgerald Street, and sits across from another North Perth icon, the Rosemount Hotel.
RWC’s Stephen Harrison, who negotiated the sale alongside Brett Wilkins, said the building was more than just bricks and mortar: “It’s a North Perth institution.”
“The property’s quirky and nostalgic nature, anchored by entertainment venues like Rosemount Bowl and Pot Black, makes it truly unique,” Wilkins said.
RWC reported the sale reflected a 6.7 per cent yield, with long-term leases and further options in place.
Malcolm McCusker, the former WA governor tasked with getting to the bottom of the issues that plagued the recent state election, has revealed Electoral Commissioner Robert Kennedy is in hospital with pneumonia.
McCusker spoke with Radio 6PR’s Simon Beaumont this morning to discuss the inquiry into the election, where voters complained of large queues and booths running out of ballot papers.
The WA Electoral Commission’s $86 million contract with recruiter PersolKelly was also in the spotlights following claims of poor staff training.
McCusker said the inquiry wanted to get to the bottom of the problems raised following the election, and ensure they could be rectified.
“I must say, look, Western Australia’s got a very democratic system, which is the enemy of other nations, I think in most cases, but we’re not perfect,” he said.
“Processes have to be improved from time to time, and so we’re hoping to do that.”
Pressed on whether Kennedy’s role was in question – with Beaumont noting it had been hard to get the commissioner on the line – McCusker said Kennedy had recently spoken to him from hospital, where he was being treated for pneumonia.
“He’s expressed full cooperation with us, and he will give us, I think, an insight among other things to the reason for the PersolKelly contract of outsourcing,” McCusker said.
McCusker also used his time on air to urge voters to make submissions to the inquiry detailing their experience on election day.
Listen to the full interview below:
The Fremantle Dockers have revealed a new honour to be awarded at the club’s annual Len Hall Tribute Game, which will be held on Anzac Day for the first time in 10 years tomorrow.
The club’s new Arthur Leggett Medal will pay tribute to the life and service of WA’s last surviving WWII prisoner of war, who died earlier this month aged 106.
Leggett – who will be honoured at a state funeral on Saturday, May 10 – played a significant role in Fremantle’s past Len Hall Tribute Games.
The Arthur Leggett Medal will be awarded to the best-on-ground player from the match, selected by a panel of media representatives.
Fremantle Dockers chief executive Simon Garlick said the medal was a fitting way to acknowledge Leggett’s connection to the club.
“Arthur Leggett holds a special place in the heart of the club, and we’re incredibly proud to introduce this medal in his honour,” Garlick said.
“It was important to the club that this recognition be shaped with the guidance and support of the Leggett and Hall families and the wider veteran community.
“We are grateful for their trust and collaboration in bringing this tribute to life.”
Leggett’s daughter, Sue Meagher, spoke to Radio 6PR’s Simon Beaumont on Wednesday, and said her father maintained his passion for football up to his death at 106.
“He was quite passionate about his Fremantle Dockers seeing they sort of adopted him over the last few years,” she said.
“I honestly believe that going to the game every year is what kept him going.”
Dockers fans are encouraged to remain in their seats at three-quarter time during the match against the Adelaide Crows tomorrow, when the club will pay special tribute to Leggett’s service and contribution to the WA community.
The annual Len Hall Tribute Game – now in its 28th year – is named in recognition of WA’s last surviving WWI Gallipoli veteran, who died in 1999.
It is held every year on Anzac Day, or the weekend of the coinciding round. The last time the fixture aligned with Anzac Day was in 2015, when Fremantle played against the Sydney Swans.
To police news now, and a 30-year-old man from the Geraldton suburb of Rangeway will face court today, accused of breaking into a home in the early hours of Wednesday and raping the woman living there while armed with a knife.
The man faces 10 charges, including aggravated sexual penetration without consent; impeding another person’s normal breathing or blood circulation by applying pressure to neck; and aggravated home burglary.
Sex crime division Detective Superintendent Hamish McKenzie said such incidents would not be tolerated.
“Members of the community have the right to feel safe and secure in their own homes, and these types of incidents are totally unacceptable and will not be tolerated,” he said.
“The WA Police Force committed a significant number of resources to this investigation, deploying specialist investigators from Perth, assisting local police to identify, locate and apprehend the alleged offender and put him before the courts.
“The investigative team were able to make the arrest within 24 hours of this dreadful crime.”
Sticking with the business breakfast, where Albanese has been asked to provide rapid-fire answers to questions prompted by photos.
One image in particular – of newly minted WA Opposition Leader Basil Zempilas – elicited the biggest laughs in the room.
Albanese said now that the former Channel Seven and radio broadcaster was in politics, he would no longer be sticking a “microphone under my noggin” at the next Telethon.
MC Ben Harvey said Zempilas would be handing himself a cheque when he becomes premier, to which Albanese replied: “That’s unlikely, he struggled to get his seat”, referring to Zempilas’ tight margin he won his seat of Churchlands by at the March 8 election.
Albanese then looked at WA Premier Roger Cook and said: “That was for you, Rog.”
We’ve moved to the Q&A section of the breakfast, where Anthony Albanese has been asked who his least favourite premier is.
He played the answer diplomatically, saying he liked them all – including the Liberal premiers in Queensland and Tasmania.
When asked who his favourite premier was, Albanese played to the room.
“Roger, of course,” he said to laughs. “I know where I am.”
Asked about his worst moment in the campaign, the prime minister addressed his infamous fall at a mining union conference earlier in the campaign.
He joked that the stage he sat on was a good example of occupational health and safety, because of its white line marking at the edge.
More on the Leadership Matters business breakfast, where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has just dropped his second major announcement of the morning – one which will help the WA government’s attempts to deprivatise the regional freight rail network.
It includes taking back the Eastern Goldfields Railway into public hands with an initial payment of $2.5 million.
“This will ensure this vital line is maintained to the proper standard, and it will cut costs or producers and consumers and boost productivity in every length of the WA supply chain,” Albanese said.
During the state election, the Cook government promised to take the Wheatbelt freight rail network back into public hands 25 years before a 50-year lease to ARC Infrastructure will expire.
The West Australian’s editor Chris Dore got the crowd talking at the paper’s Leadership Matters breakfast in Perth this morning by ripping into both major party leaders in a fiery roast-style welcome speech.
Anthony Albanese was sitting in the crowd while Dore, formerly editor of The Australian, went on quite a tear.
Dore said Albanese had run a “shameless” and at times “outrageous” campaign modelled on former Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson’s dictum of “whatever it takes”.
“You want to win, and you acting like it,” Dore said, adding that the contrast between the two campaigns could not be greater.
As for the opposition leader, who appeared at a similar event hosted by the paper earlier in the campaign, Dore said: “Mr Dutton has been stuck in quicksand and is in danger of becoming an asterisk in history.”
He went on to goad Albanese for stating this week that he did not know the name of his Greens opponent in his inner-west Sydney seat of Grayndler.
“If it were not for the ‘Save our Albo’ campaign we ran in 2016 while I was editing the Daily Telegraph in your hometown, you would have most likely lost your seat in parliament to a Green opponent,” Dore said.
The TV cameras showed Albanese giving a (perhaps forced) smile at the joke, although it’s doubtful he agrees he would have lost his seat without News Corporation’s help.
Dore also had a go at the Australian Financial Review newspaper, saying that its coverage of the previous breakfast showed why it now sold few copies in Western Australia.
We take you now to The West Australian’s Leadership Matters business breakfast at Crown Perth, where Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is speaking. You can watch the PM live below:
Now to a follow-up from a story we brought you in yesterday’s blog about the sentencing of a WA mum over a car crash which killed her daughter and step-son.
Stacey Leigh Cunningham, 35, was charged with careless driving causing death after her Mazda sedan crashed into a Ford F250 ute near Geraldton on June 1, 2020, killing Harmonie Cunningham, 10, and Nate Stewart, 7.
Cunningham’s friend Cameron Byfield was also seriously injured in the crash.
In court late on Wednesday, Cunningham narrowly avoided a jail term as she was handed a 12-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months.
As she delivered her verdict, Magistrate Sandra De Maio told Cunningham she was a good person who made a “horrible mistake”.
“I know you are deeply affected by what happened,” she said.
However, De Maio disagreed with both the prosecutor and Cunningham’s lawyer that her culpability was low, saying her distraction “cannot be looked on as momentary”.