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WAtoday Big Perth sprawl series main picture. Nigel Satterley, housing. Picture: WAtoday

Big Perth: The story behind the sprawl

WAtoday charts the forces pushing Perth ever outward.

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What in the World

Our foreign correspondents on what’s making headlines around the world.


Rio Tinto lashes Wright dynasty for implying guilt in Rinehart stoush

Gina Rinehart is locked in a court battle with the descendants of her father’s business over royalties from a mining tenement in Western Australia’s iron-rich Pilbara region.

Rio Tinto has scolded the mining dynasty fighting for a slice of its Hope Downs iron ore hub for casting doubt over what it knew.

Updated
Courts

Identity of Kings Park ‘firebug’ revealed

Emergency Services personnel at the scene of the fire off Mount Street.

Ross Cameron Males appeared in court on Friday charged with lighting five fires throughout Kings Park within the past two weeks.

Perth man admits kidnapping nine-year-old girl outside primary school

Police were alerted to the July incident after a parent from a primary school saw the child get into a car she thought looked suspicious.

Opinion
Aviation

Qantas mea culpa fails to fly with investors

There was no hiding from the investor fury at the Qantas shareholder meeting on Friday, but chairman Richard Goyder can’t blame them.

Colin Kruger
Colin Kruger

Senior Business Reporter

Qantas board suffers investors’ wrath as scandals hit home

Qantas’ directors were stony faced as shareholders vented their frustration following a tumultuous year for the business.

The airline’s shareholders have dished out one of the biggest protest votes in Australian corporate history, with more than 80 per cent of them voting down Qantas’ remuneration report.

Study, eat, sleep, repeat: Have you got what it takes to study medicine in Perth?

Vicky Ferdinands, 32, had a 12-year career as a nurse before starting medicine. She is in her third year at Notre Dame University.

Sky-high marks are only the start of a gruelling admission process to study medicine in WA, and getting in is only the start of the battle. So why do they do it?

Mixed messages on gas as energy experts descend on Perth

WA and other centres of the world energy economy meeting in Perth this week are committed to renewables, but should the transition involve gas?

Peet is behind some of Perth’s most iconic suburbs.

Perth home buyers still get their castle – but one thing is changing

Home buyers’ expectations have evolved beyond chickens and camping equipment, but the man at the helm of Perth’s oldest developer says the formula for building suburbs remains. Only the block size has changed.

Mushroom cook charged with trying to poison former husband four times

Court documents released to the media on Friday allege 49-year-old Erin Trudi Patterson attempted to murder her former partner four times between November 16, 2021, and July 29 this year when a beef Wellington was ultimately served to the final family gathering.

The Leongatha woman who served the mushroom meal suspected of killing three of her former relatives is also accused of attempting to poison her estranged husband four times.

Killer jailed for ‘senseless’ murder of wife of 50+ years

Heinz Ratke was sentenced in the NSW Supreme Court on Friday for the murder of his wife, Maria Ratke.

Heinz Ratke will spend a maximum of 17 years in prison after stabbing his wife Maria to death in Katoomba in 2020.

Tony Wright’s Column
Political expenses

Airbus Albo? Take that bait and you’ve been played like a trout

Anthony Albanese’s detractors criticise him for flying around the world too much. But is he a more frequent flyer than recent prime ministers?

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken talks to reporters prior boarding his aircraft to depart Washington on travel to the Middle East.

Blinken arrives in Israel to formally ask for ‘humanitarian pauses’ in war

Israel has rejected calls for a ceasefire. It says it has encircled Gaza City. The US secretary of state has stressed that how it defends itself matters.

Sivan with Ariana Grande in New York in 2018.

From YouTube to Hollywood: How Perth’s Troye Sivan took over the world

From YouTube sensation to actor, pop idol and style-setter, the 28-year-old is redefining what it means to be a creative artist.

‘We wanted someone funny. We called Ryan Gosling’: Hollywood’s most hilarious leading man

One city, two icons. Filmed in Sydney, The Fall Guy includes a high-octane stunt shot on the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

An action star with great comedic timing who does his own stunts on the Sydney Harbor bridge? Fall Guy director David Leitch explains why Gosling is so much more than Ken. 

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Big Perth

Western Australia Planning Minister John Carey, urban heat island, Perth sprawl. Picture: WAtoday
Exclusive

Bigger houses squeezed onto smaller blocks leave our suburbs sweating. How do we ‘re-green’ Perth?

Perth has the worst tree canopy cover of any Australian capital, with the state government putting it as low as 16 per cent coverage.

Max Naglazas
Opinion

Spread too thin: What we’re losing as Perth sprawls

The house-and-land package is still at the heart of the Australian dream, but what are we missing out on in this mind-boggling suburban expansion?

Mark Naglazas
Mark Naglazas

Journalist and sub editor

Western Australia

The South West council came under fire on Thursday after conceding it was blaring the children’s band’s ‘Hot Potato’ song at its Graham Bricknell Memorial Music Shell to discourage people from congregating there.
Exclusive
Homelessness

Wiggles demand WA council stop blaring hit song at homeless

The beloved Australian children’s music group is disappointed their song is being used by the City of Bunbury to deter homeless people from a waterfront bandstand.

Hidden in plain sight: Drug scourge blighting WA’s small country towns

The Wheatbelt region of WA has seen a significant increase in drug use and crime.

Cheap house prices and a sense of community lures many families to the Wheatbelt, but a rise in drug-related crime, break-ins and an escalating meth problem has some wishing they hadn’t.

Exclusive
Prisons

Teen detainee reveals young WA prisoners left in three-point shackles for hours

Casuarina Prison, Western Australia.

A 15-year-old detainee is speaking out from inside the notorious Unit 18 youth wing at Casuarina Prison.

Second Kings Park fire contained, this time near Jacob’s Ladder

Bush fire near Jacobs Ladder/ Mount Street in Kings Park in Perth. November 2, 2023.

Emergency services crews have contained a fire that began in scrub near the bottom of Jacob’s Ladder.

I’m no ‘rat’: Ex-Nats MP says she jumped ship to Libs for her constituents

North West Central MP Merome Beard has defected from the WA Nationals to the Liberal Party.

Carnarvon-based MP Merome Beard denied her move was about personal ambition, and said she was not a “rat” – the derogatory label slapped on her predecessor after he defected from Labor.

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Sport

David Warner

Hello or goodbye: Warner’s farewell logic is all double Dutch to me

After years of mediocre Test output, David Warner expects to retain his Test spot by proving that he is a world-class white-ball cricketer. An SCG Test farewell would be a genuine triumph of cunning and the ability to bend reality to his will.

Malcolm Knox
Malcolm Knox

Journalist, author and columnist

Steve Smith has a break between net sessions.

Net results show zealous Australia primed for desperate England

Australia have been weakened by the loss of Glenn Maxwell and Mitch Marsh, but they have a laser-like focus on beating England in Ahmedabad on Saturday.

England duo Jos Buttler (left) and Joe Root during their Cricket World Cup clash with Sri Lanka.

Last-placed England are ‘man for man’ better than Australia: Joe Root

England’s woeful World Cup campaign has not prevented Joe Root from claiming they are a better side than Australia, who can knock them out of the cup on Saturday.

Mark Zahra (left) broke the whip rules when he won the Caulfield Cup on Without A Fight.
Analysis
Horse racing

What are the whip rules in racing? And does a horse feel pain when whipped?

Ahead of the biggest week of racing in Australia - Melbourne’s spring racing carnival - Damien Ractliffe looks at the whip rules and whether they’re working.

Fans, players and governing bodies are trying to navigate the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

How the Israel-Hamas war is splitting professional sport

Sport stars and leagues have come to be at the forefront of social and political activism. But this conflict is proving much harder to navigate.

g

From the blackbooker to blinkers: Your Melbourne Cup guide to the language of racing

If you don’t know your maidens from your mudlarks, this glossary of horse racing terms is for you.

g

‘I’m coming back to win this World Cup’: Marsh’s pledge to teammates

Mitch Marsh has returned home for personal reasons, prompting a major shake-up with Australia’s team for Saturday’s match against England.

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