Business News - WA
At Close of Business podcast September 12 2024
(upbeat music) - All the latest business news from WA, deliver daily. At close of business, news briefing. - Good afternoon and welcome to that close of business podcast. I'm Nadia Woody-Hajo and I'll be reading your Thursday headlines. The Association of Mining and Exploration Companies says increased focus on ESG credentials in the code governing mineral exploration reporting could further cloud a complicated process. The joint or reserve committee code sets the parameters for companies reporting mineral resources or reserves and exploration results and is currently being updated for the first time since 2012. A draft of the updated code proposed new ESG parameters for explorers, including a requirement to disclose material ESG considerations as appropriate to the study stage from exploration results to closure. Speaking at a briefing event in Perth, AMAC director of Commonwealth policy, Neil van Drenen, said the code was not designed to factor an ESG. He said adding ESG to the code unnecessarily complicates it, doubling down on the existing legislative framework which he described as already robust. In property, Westbridge Urban's $78 million project on the site next to Regal Theater in Subiaco is expected to start construction late next year. The Metro in a development assessment panel today approved Westbridge Urban's proposal to redevelop the property on 484 Hey Street. The proposal comprises construction of a nine-story 71 apartment building and upgrades to the adjoining heritage listed Regal Theater. Proposed upgrades include a lift to access the upper theater floor, universal access and additional toilet facilities and a new bar. Westbridge has a target to start construction in the third quarter of 2025, with completion expected for the second quarter of 2027. Built in 1936, the Regal has been listed on the state register of heritage places since 1994. And finally, beer is flowing through the taps at Pangiaras 1800's era exchange hotel for the first time in 16 years after a multi-million dollar refurbishment. The venue owned by the Shire of Murray reopened for business this week under new operators Carl and Janine Bullers. Heritage elements on the external structure have been complemented with three bars, a distillery, outdoor dining spaces and a revamped interior. The pub has been closed since 2008, was purchased by the Shire in 2012 and had faced several hiccups prior to work starting to rebuild it last year. Some $10 million was poured into the project by the Shire, the federal government and the Bullers. Modeling suggested the revamp premise would generate $57.5 million in new economic output for the Shire in its first five years of operation. That's all the headlines from me. For more stories from today, visit businessnews.com.au. And coming up next on the podcast, I speak to Tom Zornmayer about the second trench of local government reforms. (upbeat music) The business world is teaming with opportunities to succeed and every day is a chance for the ambitious to learn, know and grow. Over recent years, we have built the greatest business journalist team in WA, delivering you the most trusted, comprehensive, intelligent and up-to-date news across every sector, every platform, every day. No fluff, all informative stuff. At Business News, we believe progress boils down to one simple habit. That is, what you subscribe to today shapes what you will become tomorrow. Subscribe to success, subscribe to business news. Visit businessnews.com.au/subscribe for more information. (upbeat music) - Welcome back to our Closer Business. I'm Nadia Brody-Haju and today I'm joined by Tom Zornmayer. Tom, in the recent edition of the Business News magazine, you wrote about the second trench of local government reforms. You sat down with our local government minister, Hannah Beasley, for this. What is she proposing? - Yeah, so these reforms have been on the cards for quite a long time. Now a trench one has already been passed, so it's part of a pretty broad package. It's been many, many years in the making over multiple ministers, but, so the latest trench two that has been introduced to the State Parliament, it's really around cracking down. Oh, not so much cracking down, but helping councils and executives that need a bit of assistance in dealing with localised issues, and then, yeah, cracking down on the ones that are proving problematic and probably not doing what's in the best interests of their communities. So one of the main parts of this will be the introduction of independent inspectors, monitors, adjudicators, and beefing up some of those inquiry and investigation capabilities. Because what we have at the moment is a lot of those kind of roles do fall on the sea of those local governments who are already super busy, and that can also be, you know, rightly or wrongly, it can be a bit of a conflict if the CEO is having a look into the people either council that employs them, you know, that there can be some difficulty in managing those kind of relationships. So by having a separate inspector in order for, and having those kind of, the framework that's been proposed in place is going to help to remove some of that perception and to, I guess, help bring some more expertise in to ensure that council and local government runs effectively and works in the best interests of the communities. - Do we know when that's coming up? - Oh, look, anyone's guess. I mean, it's already been tabled in Parliament, but as to the, yeah, the, they've got quite a heavy agenda. We've got an election coming up. There aren't many sitting days left. So, look, firstly, I'll say the likelihood of this getting passed prior to going into caretaker mode for the 2020, I feel like, I think it was pretty small. I think we've got some priorities around resources and energy and cutting red tape, which will probably take precedence over it. But it's in the Parliament, it's in the system. So, yeah, the work to get it cited in a law is underway. - Right. And now, traveling back in time a little bit, what has been done in the first trench of the reforms? - Yeah, so, trench one is, so that's already been put in place. And so, these were, I guess, some smaller kind of things with things to help to ease access between the public and council. So, this is live streaming of council meetings. Most of the big ones have got on board. There are still a few holdouts. They didn't have much longer left to install some cameras. Not a hard thing to do, it must be said. Publishing and the public reporting of KPIs were chief executives, which was pretty controversial. But at the end of the day, these people were being paid, in some cases, $300,000 plus a year. So, that public reporting is seen as a pretty important role to make sure they're held accountable. And as we all have known, from going through the local government elections for those of us who did vote, all 30% of us. Yeah, there were also changes to the ward systems and the public and the introduction for the larger local governments of the public election of mayors, as opposed to previously where there was the option to have that or to have the mayor chosen by the council. So, now they are all publicly elected. I imagine it must be hard to sort of police 139 local government areas in the state. And there's always gonna be talks about amalgamation, which you've touched on as well in this piece. What did Hannah Beasley have to say about that? Yeah, I mean, it's always a pretty central topic. Whenever you're talking about local government, it's something I personally believe should happen. We do have 139 of them. Quite a lot of them are smaller than a suburban straight in Perth. We've got a few that have less than 200 residents, which is quite wild to think about. So, I mean, the minister did have a little bit of a dig at the former liberal national government. Of course, those who were around for the 2017 election will remember that the Barnett government did bring in a policy to amalgamate a lot of the metropolitan councils. So, he was pushing that quite hard and he still post politics has been pushing that as an agenda, believing that's the right thing to do. So, Mr. Beasley, the minister's kind of said, well, they kind of stuffed that whole thing up, which has set that process back quite a long way. So, the current government's all around trying to make it easier to resource share between local governments. So, that goes on quite a lot already in terms of sharing rubbish services and the like, but they want to expand that, to have councils able to, and executives be able to have more responsibilities and clear responsibilities over multiple jurisdictions. Also, some interesting commentary there around the workforce shortages and how it is hard for everyone, in particular, some of those small local governments to attract quality staff. And that issue is not going to go anywhere soon and may indeed lead to some of those local governments deciding, well, we can't get staff. What are we going to do? Maybe our only option left is to amalgamate or to go down that resource sharing path. So, yeah, some fascinating little insight there into I guess where she's thinking on. Matter that most of us do kind of talk about when we are talking local governments. Really interesting to see that that discussion has persisted throughout the years and we'll be keeping an eye on the next set of local government reforms here at Business News. Listeners can read Tom's story online or pick up the September 2nd to 15th edition of the magazine that's out now. Thank you for listening and thank you, Tom, for joining me. Thank you. The latest Business News deliver daily. Subscribe and rate the show. Where have you listened to your podcast? For all the latest Business News, visit businessnews.com.au. [MUSIC]