News Archive

History was made today when Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett chaired the first meeting of State Cabinet at a West Australian university. Cabinet met in UWA's heritage-listed Senate Room adjoining Winthrop Hall.

As part of today's visit in UWA's Centenary Year, Ministers and the Premier engaged with staff and students from across the University at a range of specially designed events to showcase what UWA is doing , why it is doing it and what benefits are derived for the community.

The University welcomes Cabinet's decision today to push ahead with local government reform, which includes the extension of the City of Perth's boundary west to include all of UWA's Crawley campus and a residential area between the University and QEII Hospital.

UWA currently straddles three local government administrative areas - Perth, Nedlands and Subiaco- with one boundary dissecting the campus at Winthrop Hall and another isolating the main Crawley campus from the University's Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Visual Arts.

Mr Barnett told a media conference immediately after Cabinet that the Government was committed to achieving local government reform, starting with the metropolitan area.

"The University provides an example of just how crazy this system has been," he said.

Red tape at the media conference site marked out how local government boundaries divide UWA's campus.

"At the moment I am standing in the City of Perth and the Minister Local Government is standing in the City of Subiaco - that is the sort of nonsensical arrangements that take place."

UWA Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Johnson said the University was a very large organisation with a $1 billion annual turnover and 3500 staff split between three local government authorities.

"It adds unnecessary time delays and unnecessary expense to get the simplest things done around parking, waste management, public transport and planning," he said.

"A move to bring the entire campus into the City of Perth will be enormously beneficial in UWA's role as a key international focus point in Western Australia to take education and science to the rest of the world."

Media references

Michael Sinclair-Jones (UWA Public Affairs)  (+61 8)  6488 3229  /  (+61 4) 00 700 783