Zempilas readies for October poll

It was Basil Zempilas’s sliding doors moment.

Leaving behind his dream of senior football to become a journalist, Mr Zempilas, now 51, had given serious thought to nominating for the AFL national draft in the mid-1990s after playing 21 games in five seasons for West Perth.

But, as he admits, there was only ever enough time for him to commit to one job, and the allure of media ultimately prevailed.

“It was bittersweet,” Mr Zempilas told Business News.

“I knew straight away [that] to give it my best I wasn’t going to be able to do both.”

Whether he could have made it at football’s senior level is arguable.

Though cruelled by injury, Mr Zempilas did at one stage train with the West Coast Eagles and, playing 13 matches as a hybrid forward-ruck for West Perth, managed 15 majors in his 1992 season, including a four-goal haul on his 21st birthday against one of that year’s eventual grand finalists, South Fremantle.

There are clear parallels with those days and the past 12 months, during which Mr Zempilas has significantly scaled back his media commitments to focus on the job of lord mayor.

Then, focusing on his media career proved wise as he built a significant profile as one of Seven West Media’s most prominent sports commentators. Now, his focus is almost entirely on the granular detail of ‘roads, rates and rubbish’ as lord mayor of City of Perth.

His tenure hasn’t been without its missteps, however.

Many will recall a handful of transphobic remarks he made on breakfast radio just days after being sworn in as lord mayor; comments for which he later apologised.

And while his opponents repeatedly criticised his initial refusal to give up his media gigs if elected lord mayor, Mr Zempilas has maintained an impressive command of the city’s issues over the past two and a half years, as well as showcasing adept handling of the role’s political dimensions.

That’s been evident in a series of public rows with the state government, including over the council’s decision to initially back out of funding the construction of a $100 million public swimming pool at the redeveloped WACA Ground site as part of the Perth City Deal.

That proved to be the first in a series of spats between the state government and Mr Zempilas, culminating in the lord mayor’s apparent snub late last year when Premier Mark McGowan unveiled the timeline for an Indigenous cultural centre, to be built adjacent to Perth Concert Hall.

Both men have repeatedly insisted there’s no animosity at play.

And yet their public dynamic does add a layer of intrigue to this year’s council elections, at which Mr Zempilas has declared his intention to seek a full four-year term as lord mayor.

Reports of his interest in a tilt at state politics are strenuously denied throughout an hour-long conversation earlier this month. To boot, he insists the job of lord mayor is his sole focus ahead of an impending re-election battle in October.

“I don’t sit here now thinking, ‘How do I get to state parliament? Where is there a seat available? And where do I fill out the forms?’” Mr Zempilas said.

“In this role I’m apolitical.

“I’m not a member of any political party, I’ve never been to a meeting of a major or minor political party.

“I intend to run again for lord mayor in October of this year and I hope to win. That would be a four-year term and that would take me out of play, clearly, for any other election that might take place during that time.”

That’s not an entirely convincing argument, though, with Campbell Newman’s campaign and subsequent victory at Queensland’s 2012 state election an obvious counterpoint.

Careful wording aside, however, Mr Zempilas is right to focus on the race in front of him.

Local elections are decidedly low stakes in Western Australia, given residents aren’t required to cast a ballot as in other states.

That’s historically led to low turnout, including in 2020, when just 6,300 ballots were cast among nearly 15,000 electors. Then, Mr Zempilas prevailed by just a few hundred votes over Di Bain, who now serves alongside him on council.

And while the city’s population, which is generally younger, better educated and higher paid than most of the state, tilts towards left-leaning candidates at state and federal polls, property owners, corporations and businesses are granted the right to vote in council races if they own land within the city’s boundaries, adding uncertainty to the outcome.

Add the use of first-past-the-post voting to determine a winner and efforts to gauge the state of the race can prove incredibly inaccurate.

Mr Zempilas is so far the only high-profile candidate to throw their hat in the ring. Better still for him is the absence of a top-tier candidate in the wings.

Crucially, Ms Bain, who served briefly as the city’s deputy mayor, has told Business News she won’t run for lord mayor or council this year, opening up her seat and relieving Mr Zempilas of what could have been a fierce rematch.

Other potential contenders, including Spacecubed founder Brodie McCulloch, have similarly ruled out a bid.

Former political candidates are also showing scant interest in the race, with David Dwyer, who was the Liberal candidate for the federal seat of Perth at last year’s election, not interested, and Kylee Veskovich, who has previously run for council and state parliament, as yet undecided.

Though the election is eight months away, realistically, October’s vote could be a formality for Mr Zempilas. It’s not unheard of in local elections, with smaller local governments in Perth’s western suburbs often attracting few willing candidates outside of the incumbent.

None of which is to say the lord mayor is taking his position for granted.

“I am expecting – and I don’t just say this for appearances – to have an election in October,” Mr Zempilas said.

The rigours of that race will be entirely different to 2020, because Mr Zempilas is no longer a first-time candidate. While he now has a better feel for the demands of the job, he’s also the incumbent and will need to explain and defend his record to voters.

That includes the council’s work to address homelessness.

Homelessness has receded from when the current council was elected in 2020, with the Western Australian Alliance to End Homelessness (WAAEH) estimating 784 people as homeless in Perth as of October 2022.

That’s an improvement on two years earlier, when there were 844 people without a fixed address, but still a significant increase on recent years.

Mr Zempilas hasn’t always been the most eloquent speaker on this front, highlighted during his pre-election campaigning when he wrote in his weekly column for The West Australian that unhoused people should be “[f]orcibly” moved from the city’s main thoroughfares if they wouldn’t consent to being moved on.

He’s apologised for those remarks but has nonetheless remained outspoken on the issue, telling a parliamentary hearing last year that services ought to be “decentralised” rather than concentrated in East Perth.

Some of the council’s actions have been dramatic, including when members unanimously rejected Ruah Community Services’ move to relocate its drop-in centre from its current premises on Shenton Street to a new facility along James Street (earning a stern rebuke from Homelessness Minister John Carey).

Planning Minister Rita Saffioti went one further in September, overturning the council’s decision and calling the facility “entirely appropriate” for the area.

That move is indicative of a broader trend in homelessness policy, which Mr Zempilas readily conceded had in large part been driven by forces outside of local government.

Included in that is the state’s recent $5.1 million spot purchase of The Murray Hotel in West Perth.

The plan is to convert the facility into a housing pathway option, broadly mirroring the revamp of the YHA Hostel as Boorloo Bidee Mia, designed specifically for Indigenous populations suffering homelessness, in 2021.

Mr Zempilas regularly references the city’s role in supporting Ruah Community Service’s Safe Night Space program in East Perth when talking about homelessness.

And though he accepts it’s disingenuous to claim credit on this front, he does make the rather straightforward observation that there is more crisis accommodation available than prior to his election in October 2020.

“What we want is for people who are sleeping rough on our streets to have somewhere to go,” Mr Zempilas said.

“The fact there are four facilities that did not exist two-plus years ago is something that we take some pride in, but [we as a council] know there’s still a lot more work to be done.”

Quantifying other aspects of the council’s record is similarly imprecise.

Crime, for instance, has demonstrably fallen since the last election, according to data from WA Police, with last year the safest for Perth and surrounding suburbs since at least 2015.

That tracks a general decrease in crime across the whole state, however.

Other positive trends have largely been driven by the private sector, with office occupancy, which like most other capital cities fluctuated along with pandemic restrictions, has reached 80 per cent of pre-pandemic levels as of November, the highest rate of any state capital in Australia per research from the Property Council of Australia.

The same can be said for disheartening retail vacancy data.

As of August last year, CBRE research shows empty shopfronts to be as much as 28 per cent in the first half of 2022. That’s compared to a national rate of just 17 per cent.

Investment has been consistent, however, with Far East Consortium this month announcing it would spend $80 million building a 23-storey apartment development at Perth City Link, the DevelopmentWA-led project being marketed as yet another attempt to bridge the city’s centre with Northbridge.

Other notable developments in that precinct include Edith Cowan University’s relocation to the city (per government funding set out in the Perth City Deal), and a renovation earmarked for the maligned Yagan Square precinct.

Some of this will complement the council’s efforts to grow the city’s residential population.

Council has already declared its priorities on this front, with the city’s planning strategy, recommended for Western Australian Planning Commission approval in mid-December, including a population target of 55,000 residents by 2036, which would be almost double the population recorded at last year’s census.

Dwelling growth will need to lift across all six of the city’s suburbs to make that happen, with West Perth and the city’s CBD earmarked for most of the heavy lifting.

Much of this is a priority for after re-election, Mr Zempilas says.

When it comes to making the case for a second term, Mr Zempilas reached for a decidedly modest achievement: stability.

He and his colleagues can probably claim a fair deal of credit for that.

Prior to its suspension, the previous council had become so riven in factionalism, bullying and ill behaviour that, with the benefit of an accompanying inquiry, the state government has drawn heavily from the experience to inform its recent overhaul of local government.

That disquiet appears unlikely to happen again under Mr Zempilas’s tenure.

During the past two years, councillors have not regularly voted in blocs and, owing to an agreement struck in the days after the council was sworn in, the role of deputy mayor has been shared every 12 months, enforcing some degree of coordination.

Media attention has noticeably simmered, too, with few reports suggesting any significant policy divides or personality clashes.

“We have returned trust and credibility to the city,” Mr Zempilas said.

“I’m very pleased that you don’t read stories about disharmony and dysfunction among the council and administration.”

Some turnover in the administration has stood out, with all five general managers having been replaced since fresh council elections were held in 2020, leaving chief executive Michelle Reynolds the only consistent executive in that time.

She maintains a strong working relationship with the lord mayor, and perhaps owing to renewed stability oversaw a $8.57 million surplus for the city in the latest reporting period.

That, coupled with a 0.5 per cent residential rate rise and a balanced budget for FY23, makes for a substantive record for Mr Zempilas and councillors to run on. Not that Mr Zempilas is content to leave it at that.

“We’re better now, but we want to keep getting better,” he said.