As it happened: WA news on Wednesday, December 4

To Japan now where former WA Greens candidate Donna Nelson has sentenced to six years in a Japanese prison for drug trafficking.

However, 430 days will be deducted from her sentence for time already served after she was arrested in January 2023 when Japanese customs found nearly 2 kilograms of methamphetamine in a suitcase she was carrying.

The 58-year-old grandmother has maintained she was the victim of a Nigerian scam and that her online lover “Kelly” had arranged for her to bring the suitcase from Laos because he told her he was a fashion designer in Japan and he wanted to sell the case in one of his shops.

The panel of judges said the suitcase had a sophisticated hidden pocket that stashed the drugs and that Nelson had played a peripheral but essential role in the operation.

However, they also expressed sympathy for her and said Kelly had taken advantage of her and could not condemn her actions strongly.

They said Nelson’s case was similar to other love scam cases seen in the country.

Read the full story from 9 News Perth reporter Jamie Freestone who is in Japan here.

Heartbroken parents who lost their children in car crashes have joined WA’s top road cop and the road safety minister on a panel trying to drive down the state’s soaring road toll.

Daniel Campo, Samantha Saffioti, Tyler Rowe, and Caroline Herring were among the guests of an ABC Radio Perth forum, where calls were made to reduce speed limits and to strengthen P-plater restrictions just days after they came into effect.

“You don’t want to live a second life like we are. We had a former great life, now we live a crap life to put it frankly,” Daniel Campo said, whose son 18-year-old Nick died in a crash in July.

Nick Campo was one of four passengers in the ute, while the 17-year-old driver is behind bars.

‘Tom’s Law’, which restricts P-platers to just one passenger during the first six months of driving, was introduced on Saturday and already there are calls that it doesn’t go far enough.

“It needs to be longer, in our opinion, it needs to be 12 months,” Daniel Campo said.

Road Safety Minister David Michael said six months was in line with other states.

WA’s road toll this year stands at 165, the highest since 2016.

Former Australian of the Year Fiona Stanley was among a group of protesters calling on the Dockers to dump their sponsorship with Woodside outside the club’s annual general meeting on Tuesday night.

Footage of the protest shows Stanley with about 30 Go Beyond Gas protesters including Greens MLC Brad Pettitt and Curtin University sustainability professor Peter Newman singing outside the meeting at the Esplanade Hotel.

Stanley, who the state’s largest public hospital is named after, said she was “anguished and angry” about the sponsorship in a social media post.

“I think that the data…the science is so strong now about fossil fuels it is probably the biggest threat to the health and wellbeing of our children now let alone the future,” she said.

Woodside’s long-running sponsorship of the Dockers has angered climate activists including high-profile Dockers fans like former WA Premier Carmen Lawrence and was the focus of a campaign while its renewal was being considered by the club last year.

The Dockers ultimately renewed the sponsorship for another two years with chief Simon Garlick saying Woodside’s gas would play a role in the energy transition and that the company had stuck with the club through thick and thin.

In September last year Garlick told the ABC that organisations which had the capacity to support sporting clubs at the level Woodside had were few and far between.

When the sponsorship renewal was announced last year Woodside chief executive Meg O’Neill said as her company moved forward in the energy transition, partnerships with organisations like the Dockers would be critical.

Conservation Council WA fossil fuels program manager Anna Chapman, who is also a Dockers member who attended the AGM, said the sponsorship presented a significant reputational risk to the club, given the devastating impact of the company’s operations on the climate and environment.

To politics now where WA Premier Roger Cook has visited a home in Currambine to spruik the second round of electricity credits which will hit power bills later this week.

The $350 credit follows the $350 credit earlier this year which has been funded by the state ($400) and federal ($300) governments.

Both state and federal governments are acutely aware that cost of living remains top of mind for voters as they gear up for both elections early next year.

The credit will start being applied to power bills from December 7.

Cook said the power credits were not impacting Australia’s stubborn inflation levels which is a major factor in preventing the Reserve Bank from dropping interest rates.

“We’ve had advice and modelling from Treasury, which suggests that this is not in doesn’t have an inflationary effect,” he said.

“We spread them over two payments over the course of the year which is another way that we can blend this cost relief into the economy without it having an inflationary effect.”

When asked whether the government was considering looking at other government charges like water bills or car registration Cook said his government was looking “right across the spectrum of state government.”

“I’m certainly not ruling out more cost-of-living measures,” he said.

“We’ll obviously look at all the opportunities that present to us and take advice from Treasury and take advice from the experts in terms of where West Aussies are doing at toughest and how we can particularly target those [people].”

With our state’s housing minister ‘pulling every lever’ to solve the housing crisis and the federal government putting forward a swathe of solutions, what do the people actually think of our government’s efforts?

Master Builders Australia has today released new independent research into the state of the housing crisis with 90 per cent claiming it was difficult to afford to buy or rent property.

Another 85 per cent agreed there was a shortage of housing, and seven in 10 say the housing crisis has gotten worse over the last 12 months.

Master Builders Australia’s chief-executive Denita Wawn said they were sombre stats that showed households and businesses are hurting.

“We’ve seen the housing crisis worsen over the last 18 months with more than one in three Australians now going without essentials like food or medicine to pay their rent or mortgage,” she said.

“This Christmas, while many will be decorating their homes, a large share will be trying to keep their home.”

Wawn said the industry needed more skilled tradies, simplified workplace laws and an industry watchdog to hold unlawful unions to account.

A small update to a post we brought you yesterday, where stallholders heralded the end of the popular Farmers Market on Manning, in Perth’s southern suburbs.

Well after some brief – albeit widespread – outrage, the markets are back on this weekend at Hedley Park in Bentley.

Omnomnom Food Truck, which was among the vendors to break the news of the markets’ imminent closure, posted on social media late on Tuesday that the markets would return “until a more concrete succession plan is in place”.

“This means we’ll have the joy of serving you at this wonderful market a little longer while the organisers work on finding the best way forward,” they said.

The markets’ Facebook page also posted that it was open on Saturday.

We’re sure this will be welcome news to the thousands of visitors who flock to the markets each weekend.

The state government has formed a Little Penguin Advisory Group in a bid to protect the dwindling population of the birds on Penguin Island, off the Rockingham coast.

The move comes after a decade of inaction and multiple reports regarding a discovery centre on the popular tourist destination.

WA Marine Science Institute chief executive Dr Luke Twomey will chair the group, which is due to first meet in January.

The population of little penguins on the island has dropped to about 114 birds, down from as many as 2000 back in 2007.

Scientists have been warning the government about the population’s decline for years.

Environment Minister Reece Whitby said the advisory group was the latest in a string of government initiatives addressing the decline, including the policing of speed limits around the island; upgraded nesting boxes; limits on visitations; and the decision to not press ahead with a discovery centre on the island.

“We know that little penguins exist elsewhere in Australia and Western Australia. What are the learnings in those other communities that we can help inform ways to protect the penguins right here in Rockingham?” he said.

“The big picture is a warming climate and what the impact that has on their habitat and their food source.”

City of Rockingham Mayor Deb Hamblin said the penguin colony had been part of the region’s environment for years.

“We need to make sure that we get enough research to make sure that going forward that colony can thrive,” she said.

You would be forgiven for thinking Cottesloe was the centre of the universe yesterday, given the furore surrounding the cancellation of Sculptures by the Sea.

But the story still has some legs with the Coalition seizing on the controversy and committing $1.5 million over two years to bring the event back in 2026 and 2027.

More than 220,000 people attend the event each year.

The event organisers announced on Tuesday that funding through Commonwealth Agency Creative Australia had dried up forcing the cancellation of the 2025 event.

It has been revealed that organisers were offered support to stage the event at alternative coastal locations like Scarborough Beach in the City of Stirling but they were rejected.

Liberal candidate for Curtin Tom White and WA Senator Michaelia Cash announced this morning the Coalition would fund the event if elected to government at next year’s federal election.

“The Albanese Government pretends it cares about Western Australia but it has no concept of what is important to the people of our great state,” Cash said.

“Peter Dutton and the Coalition get the fact this is a much-loved event and deserves to opportunity to continue into the future.”

White stuck the boot in to Labor and his opponent independent Kate Chaney.

“The Federal Member for Curtin Kate Chaney has proved completely ineffective in supporting one of this electorate’s great events,” he said.

“Whether it is through lack of motivation or lack of influence Kate Chaney has let the people of Curtin down.”

Chaney and Creative Australia were contacted for comment.