WA? That would NOT be Washington State (USA), but Western Australia State (nation name redundant). That august body was recently in the news for its tone-deaf response to people who were homeless and went walkabout from the supposed health and safety of motel rooms in a pandemic.1
Western Australia is at it again, promoting an international standard procedure for destroying homeless encampments. That involves criminalization by association of the encampment with any and all available community atrocities from intensive littering all the way to child rape. Ideally, this generates a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) response from the neighbourhood.
That in turn provides the community leverage to take whatever actions are needed to bulldoze the encampment, which often involves seizing or destroying meagre possessions of the people being evicted. Presumably, this allows the encampment criminals — litterers, muggers and axe murderers all — to fade back into the general community, out of sight and out of mind.
Unfortunately for Western Australia, the city council of Fremantle is not playing ball. No, they aren’t happy with the encampment. No, they didn’t ask it to be there. Yes, they’d love it to vanish, in a manner suitable to the needs of the homeless tent city inhabitants.
“This time the council has gone too far” says the WA Premier.
Yeah, really! What is this? Compassion? Humanity? What good can possibly come of it? Read more at ABC News: WA Police link serious alleged offences including child sexual assault to tent city for homeless in Fremantle
