Brent Fleeton
Councillor - City of Perth
IMPORTANT LOCAL ISSUES
Below are some of the issues we face as City of Perth residents and business operators
Perth's hospitality venues & retailers need our support
The new City of Perth Council needs experience in fully understanding the issues of the hospitality and retail sectors
The number one issue for me going into this campaign is to address the following problem:
How can the City of Perth become the destination of choice for more visitors, and how can it attract new residents and small businesses to call the CBD home?
It starts and ends with cleaner, safer, brighter streets:
From the experience of the first CBD visitor in the morning to the last restaurant patron in the evening, we need to be proud of our City. This means getting tough when it comes to cleaning up our streets.
I am sick of walking around Murray and Hay streets in the morning, seeing the rubbish and filth accumulating near shops and businesses. I am sick of standing near a CAT Bus stop because it's also a makeshift bedroom. I want to restore pride in our city. We have some amazing architecture hidden in plain sight due to the neglect caused by the City. Just walk around Hay and Murray streets near the King Street Precinct, some of the most beautiful buildings you can see in Perth covered in rubbish. What does this say about us to visitors?
I will always push for more street-cleaning and incentivise the proper maintenance and beautifcation of our prime thoroughfares. Businesses can only do so much, they shouldn't be burdened with a rates bill and the task of cleaning the footpaths themselves. I've experienced how poor the customer service is at the City of Perth when it comes to interacting with ratepayers and property owners. I've represented retail and hospitality landlords, you've too often been taken for granted.
This is the hot topic of the election: homelessess
There are dozens of organisations spending millions of taxpayer dollars each year on homelessness. The newly endorsed plan to tackle this issue from the City of Perth commissioners deserves time to see if it can work, but time is running out. We don't have 2 or 3 years to wait for new housing. People simply don't want to be in the CBD right now.
We have some 800 people sleeping rough each night, we need to act now. Be it trialing overnight shelters with existing accommodation providers, to utilising services like Beddown which uses council car parks like they have in Brisbane or Melbourne, we need to act.
If the current way of addressing this is failing, we need new people and new ideas. We must be mindful that our visitors can choose to visit huge suburban shopping centres instead of putting up with the current environment. I will work with my new colleagues, putting aside roadblocks, and fixing this problem.
Real examples of red tape reduction
I've been working to reduce red tape in local government for years
Candidates at every election love talking about cutting red tape. It sounds great on TV and radio, but ask them for examples, how they've done it before and most importantly how it will benefit a business and you'll often get a blank look from them.
From my time as a local councillor in Bayswater, to my efforts on behalf of clients since I started my business in Perth, this is what I have been focusing on. I have worked with retail traders and hospitality venues with a simple goal in mind: cut costs and bring in new customers by working with the local government to work around the often ill-thought out process devised by an out-of-touch bureaucracy. It might be a signage application that takes 3 forms, 2 agency approvals and a 4 month delay. It might be an absurd fee attached to an application, or the lingering 1950s retail trading hours that Perth is known for. It all needs to go.
My most recent and most relevant example to a lot of businesses in Perth is my work at On The Point at Point Fraser in East Perth. With six seperate businesses operating a range of restaurants, bars and cafes, the City of Perth had huge legacy issues plaguing the operating success of the facility. Months for signage approval, absurdly high parking fees, no help from the City's officers. Fast forward to today, we've successfully progressed issues relating to the car park, signage, leasing, and events. I want to use this experience at busting through the City's barriers to get the same results across Perth.
There is simply too much at stake right now for every business in hospitality and retail to accept the status quo imposed by the City's bureaucrats. I will be on your team to get results, I will never accept excuses from the City that something cannot be done simply because they say so.
Keeping more of Perth's wealth local
We have the best living conditions in the world, we're in the right time zone to do business with the bulk of Asia, and we have leverage over the world's biggest companies. Now is the time to lock in more benefits for more people thanks to our strong resources sector.
Cities aren’t abstract creations on a map made up of concrete and glass, cities are built around people. We need bold ideas to achieve targets like the Property Council’s 90k vision.
Now, let’s set the context for this particular idea.
The WA resources sector has kept our state’s economy growing for years. We've never really experienced a state-wide recession, but take away the resource export revenue, and what do we have? A constant flow of capital out of our state.
Now is the time to supercharge the Perth-based financial services industry on the back of our resources & energy sectors by establishing a Minerals Exchange in the heart of our city.
Yes, metals are traded in London and New York, mostly because they always have been. We can change that with the right incentives, leverage through State Agreements and most importantly through relationships.
Let’s use the firepower of key Western Australian ambassadors like Gina Rinehart, Mark McGowan, Elizabeth Gaines, Mathias Cormann, Andrew Forrest and Nev Power. Let’s leverage BHP’s reliance on the Pilbara, and use Rio Tinto’s desperate need to recover their reputation.
This is an important project for the incoming Perth City Council because it creates local jobs, which leads to local office rentals, which leads to new apartments. It keeps more people in Perth’s CBD, shopping in our retail stores and eating in our hospitality venues.
The CBD and West Perth would get a much-needed boost in office tenants, then looking east of Barrack Street would be the prime location for new apartments. This won't be easy, but we have to think big and act quickly.
We are the resources capital of the world. We should be at the very least the banking capital of the region. Too much of the wealth generated in WA leaves our state and never returns. This isn't constrained to resources, think of all that superannuation money that is managed in Melbourne. Why isn't more of our money managed here?
As Nev Power said at a recent Business News event: “We can bring and attract all of those financial businesses down here from Hong Kong to Perth. We’re in the same time zone. We have all the infrastructure and facilities needed here and it'd be a fantastic base for all those big financial institutions”.
WA Property Council's Plan For Perth
9 ideas to boost economic activity, to create jobs and to restore confidence.
The WA Property Council has released its 'Plan for Perth': https://bit.ly/3itl924
Sandra Brewer and the team know it will take a combined effort of all levels of government, business and the community to address the plethora of issues building up after years of chaos at Council House.
While I support the report, the specific recommendations I would like to immediately implement as part of the new council team (in partnership with the State Government) are:
1) Cut the $1,100 tax placed on every single car bay in the City of Perth every year to $0. This is a no-brainer. Mark McGowan must do this. Businesses cannot afford this tax, think of all those vacant tenancies now still forced to pay. It's also a huge barrier to the City itself in lowering parking rates.
2) Spend the bulk of the $130 million which has accumulated as part of the parking tax on a city-wide beautification project. Let's be proud of our city again. Adelaide Terrace and Wellington Street desperately need some love. New street trees, LED lighting, supporting new ventures like BoxParks in dead areas, and really just supporting a more attractive eastern gateway to our city. There are many more areas we could target to improve the amenity for residents and businesses right across the CBD.
3) Push ahead with a new Minerals Exchange ASAP to get new businesses into commercial tenancies which brings more CBD foot traffic for our retailers and cafes/restaurants. Read more about the Minerals Exchange here.
4) Leverage existing partnerships and the broad support across business, government, charitable and community housing sectors to progress the 'No Wrong Door' strategy by selecting 2 new sites ASAP for immediate construction of Common Ground facilities such as the asset being built on the corner of Hill and Wellington streets. This will bring online 210 beds to help address homelessness.
Now, over to you. What do you think? What would you like to see prioritised? Email me at vote@brent4perth.com
Easing the budget burden
85% of the City's income is from car parking and rates. What happens when people aren't visiting the City and what happens when rentals fall away?
The City of Perth budget is far too reliant on car parking and rates, especially from commercial/retail property. This isn't new.
With huge costs going up each year, and now with the COVID response, you cannot rely so heavily on revenue which is so cyclical due to changing economic conditions. Looking towards the next five years, what happens when the property market changes for the worse and our ratepayers can no longer afford to keep funding the ever-increasing spending? Why haven't the Commissioners used their time to structurally change the budget? Wasn't their tenure the time to make the tough decisions?
Come October, the new Perth City Council needs to immediately work on new revenue streams to take the burden off those who simply won't be able to cop it with falling property prices/rents. The old local council approach to taxing and spending is dead.
With my experience and understanding of these issues, I know I can be part of the new council team that future-proofs the City's finances so we can keep delivering those services our businesses and residents need.Buy Local
Supporting our local business community through a simple procurement policy improvement
We need a new procurement incentive for truly local Perth businesses.
If you have your head office within the City of Perth, or if the bulk of your employees reside in the City of Perth, your tender submission should be given a boost in assessment scoring.
This will be in accordance with all procurement policy requirements as set out in local government regulations and the relevant Act. Other public sector entities do it, we can do it too.
We have to use our power as a large purchasing business to get the best value for money on behalf of ratepayers, while doing all it can to support those in our supply chain who add to our local community.
Upskilling our vital industry groups
There are easy, cheap and tangible ways where the City of Perth can support our most vulnerable industries.
If COVID proved anything, it's that most small businesses in the City of Perth aren't where they need to be with their investment in digital readiness.
Research conducted by Venture Insights and commissioned by NBN Co found that 49 per cent of respondents have increased online shopping during the COVID-19 crisis. Significantly, 70 per cent now consciously supported local businesses online and the same number would like to support more local businesses, but felt they had a limited online presence.
To that end, we can make a big difference with just small investments into our industry bodies like the Australian Hotels Association and Australian Retailers Association so that they can upskill the digital capabilities of their member businesses, attempt to blunt the COVID storm, while taking advantage of changing sentiment.
Authorised by Brent Fleeton PO Box 3440 Broadway Nedlands WA 6009