There’s a Seinfeld-type plot to the lord mayor and premier crossing swords when the city is at a crossroads.
Watching Mark McGowan go through the reasons for not inviting Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas to a government announcement in the city last week reminded me of a Seinfeld episode.
Jerry couldn’t understand why he wasn’t invited to a party being thrown by his dentist, but his friends Elaine, George and Kramer were.
The comedian thought if he tagged along to the party with George he could blend in and not miss out. George refused to help.
“For all I know, this guy went out of his way to not invite you,” George insisted.
“How am I going to feel if I show up with an uninvited, unwelcome intruder?”
In the end, Jerry snuck into the party before knocking a model of the Empire State Building out of the apartment window, which in turn popped a giant balloon of Woody Woodpecker on the street below.
The party host stormed over.
“Who invited you?” the dentist yelled. “You’re a troublemaker.”
Silly stuff, right?
Well, maybe in the real world the lord mayor is behaving like Jerry and the premier is acting like the dentist. One thing is for sure.
There’s a rift between the premier’s office and that of the lord mayor, and that’s no good for the city.
It seems to date back to July 2021, when the new City of Perth council decided it wouldn’t pay for the ongoing upkeep of a swimming pool as part of the WACA Ground redevelopment.
Instead, the council would make a $25 million contribution to stay involved in the sweeping $1.5 billion Perth City Deal, mainly funded by the state and federal governments.
No sooner had the council come to its decision before the premier issued a statement.
“The City of Perth has a misguided view that they don’t need to be part of a $1.5 billion package for our city,” Mr McGowan said.
The public slanging match, combined with some private discourse involving the lord mayor, premier and their people, left bad blood.
There’s also a strong belief among senior government operatives that Mr Zempilas is plotting a run for the Liberal Party at the 2025 election.
He rejects that.
But no matter how many times Mr McGowan suggests failing to invite the lord mayor to landmark city announcements is not unusual, it is.
The one last week will involve ripping up a City of Perth car park to build a world-class Aboriginal cultural centre 400 metres from Council House.
“That’s state government land and this is state and federal government money,” Mr McGowan said.
Not inviting the local government leader was “par for the course”, the premier insisted.
There have been other examples of the government keeping the lord mayor out of the limelight in the CBD.
Local Government Minister John Carey was asked similar questions about Mr Zempilas’ absence when announcing a redevelopment of Yagan Square in April.
Like last week, the lord mayor held a press conference nearby, after the government’s media event.
“If there are any issues then they are not issues from my side of the fence,” Mr Zempilas said last week.
Even though the invitation protocol fight, like the Seinfeld episode, is comical, there’s an act of parliament being trampled in the process.
Section 8 of the City of Perth Act demands cooperation.
“To develop and maintain collaborative inter-governmental relationships at regional, state, national and international levels with a view to developing and implementing strategies for the continued improvement of the City of Perth,” it reads.
The Act is also in place so the “unique role and responsibilities of the lord mayor and councillors are recognised” given Perth is our capital city.
The real tragedy of the current chasm between the state government and lord mayor’s office is that the election of this council was seen as an opportunity for renewal and progress, after the last council collapsed in scandal.
And the announcement of a long-overdue Aboriginal cultural centre should never have been overshadowed in any way by a petty spat between two leaders about who should be there.
