Return to sender

SAMSON veteran Arthur Stanton OAM’s email must have got lost in translation at the City of Fremantle.
The 82-year-old former sergeant wrote to then mayor Brad Pettitt and his elected ward members Crs Frank Mofflin and Sam Wainwright asking for a change in leadership on January 21 – two days before the State Government closed ‘tent city’ at Pioneer Park.
Titled ‘Downfall of Fremantle City’, the email called on Dr Pettitt to submit his resignation instead of taking leave of absence to run as a Greens WA candidate for South Metropolitan in March.
“Furthermore, I would suggest it is time the Minister for Local Government takes a good, long look into the operations of the Fremantle City Council, and I urge the ratepayers of Fremantle to move a vote of No Confidence in the Fremantle City Council.”
CC’d to the minister and local media, the Fremantle resident of 50 years pulls no punches: “Sadly, I find it necessary to write and voice my disappointment and disgust with the Fremantle city council, from the mayor right through to our sitting councillors.
“Was the Mayor sitting on his hands and waiting for some political advantage that he may gain? It is obvious that the Council had no plans or intention to stop this politically motivated move by some people … we know that there is a housing problem, but this is not the way to handle it.
“Fremantle City you could have shown some initiative by finding alternative short term assistance for the homeless, such as some of our empty buildings.”
Mr Stanton told StreetWise the City’s silence is telling, the interaction between the City and the community over the past decade, “non-existent, except maybe when they are up for re-election or seeking election”.

Decline

Mr Stanton says the decline of the city began before COVID: “We stopped visiting Fremantle because it is not a family friendly shopping precinct.”
Appalled at how the City allowed tent city organisers to remain in Pioneer Park for nearly a month, he said: “And now we have the desecration of Pioneer Park, the disruption of the freedom and safety of movement of the general public and business owners going about their daily business.
“The mayor and council has allowed the problem to grow, this could have been stopped on Boxing Day if councillors and rangers had carried out their duties and moved them on … Pioneer Park is a thoroughfare for the use of all Australians.”
Mr Stanton asked whether Dr Pettitt was, “sitting on his hands and waiting for some political advantage that he may gain? It is obvious that the Council had no plans or intention to stop this politically motivated move by some people, the majority of whom are not locals, rather they are trouble makers from the other side of Perth, stirred on by radicals”.
Mr Stanton re-introduced the ANZAC Day parade in Fremantle in 2005 and was Deputy Warden at Fremantle War Memorial from 2004 to 2006.
Mr Stanton was born into a distinguished military family. His grandfather served in WW1 and four uncles served in WW2. A member of the Australian Regular Army between 1956 and 1965, he joined the RSL in 1995, Cockburn branch.
In the lead-up to Anzac Day commemorations in 2019, Labor’s South Metro member Pierre Yang described Mr Stanton as, “a true Australian legend. We are privileged to have him”.