This is the personal blog of Ian Ker, who was Councillor for the South Ward of the Town of Vincent from 1995 to 2009. I have been a resident of this area since 1985. This blog was originally conceived as a way of letting residents of Vincent know what I have been doing and sharing thoughts on important issues. I can now use it to sound off about things that concern me.

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Saturday, October 25, 2014

Right On The Money, Ken.

Ken Travers was right on the money in the Legislative Council on Thursday.
Watch the video or read the transcript. Thanks to Jeremy Mowe for the link to the video.
Hon KEN TRAVERS: I remind those members on the other side who have spoken in the past about the importance of the Dadour provisions that the land we are talking about is the symbolic heartland of the Dadour provisions. It is the sliver of land that the government forgot.
Hon Adele Farina: That’s why they forgot it.
Hon KEN TRAVERS: The slither of land that the government forgot was the land that was the problem that created the Dadour provisions in the 1970s.
Hon Helen Morton: It’s not forgotten.
Hon KEN TRAVERS: Does the minister realise it is the Dadour land?
Hon Helen Morton: Not forgotten; not forgotten.
Hon KEN TRAVERS: The land that we are talking about goes along the City of Subiaco, past the hospital and around the university and is the very land that in the 1970s the City of Nedlands tried to take from the City of Subiaco, which led to the Dadour provisions being put into the Local Government Act over many years. It is the symbolic heartland of the Dadour provisions. What an absolute irony!
There is another argument that the government could take. If we were to accept the argument put forward by the minister today that it has always known about the slither of land, why would it then come up with a more complex way of doing what it is doing, rather than accept the way I outlined yesterday to accept the recommendation for the city of Riversea? There is one other conspiracy theory, and if the minister is correct that the government did not forget it and did it as a conscious act, then the conspiracy theory comes true.
That conspiracy theory is that if they had accepted the city of Riversea yesterday, the City of Subiaco would be entitled to seek a referendum under the Dadour provisions! The very spiritual land could have invoked the Dadour provisions to come to fruition. I wonder whether maybe we went for the option that those in the cabinet were stupid—maybe they are. Maybe it is a conspiracy to deny the people of Subiaco, who live in the land that created the Dadour provisions, the option of having the Dadour provisions on this occasion and that it is a grand conspiracy concocted by the Liberals—without the help of the National Party on this occasion, Hon Col Holt, I am glad to see. Maybe it is a conspiracy. But they are the choices—either the government forgot about it or, if the Minister for Mental Health is right in her protests this evening, it has engaged in a grand conspiracy to not have the creation of the city of Riversea so that the City of Subiaco can be abolished and it will deny the people of Subiaco their democratic rights under the 
Dadour provisions.
How ironic is it that the once great Liberal Party is now in the gutter, conspiring to get around the laws of this state in such an underhanded and devious way. I go back to my comments this morning that this is a case in which the government just forgot and did not get it. At the very least, if the Minister for Mental Health wants to prosecute her case, by all means go ahead, but all she raised in that case is the fact that the government is trying to deny the people of Subiaco, in the very land that created the Dadour provisions in the first place, the right to have access to the Dadour provisions.
Members may recall my final concluding words this morning: the Dadour provisions were created in the City of Subiaco and the people of Subiaco should have access to them. They should, as should everybody else in Western Australia. Instead, we have an underhanded, sneaky and devious government that cannot even do devious–sneaky well because of its complete dysfunction and chaos.

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