This was published 1 year ago
Thank you for following the news along with us today.
We will be publishing some education news later tonight if you’re a real news junkie and want to check back in.
Tomorrow, we will continue to bring you new information about the Floreat killings.
On a lighter note, we will also bring you the latest in WA property, some fun food news and an exciting exclusive interview with a prominent Perth personality in the Lunch with Jesinta Burton series.
See you in the morning!
Emma
Sticking with environmental news green groups are lauding Environment Minister Reece Whitby for removing a biosecurity expert and former Chevron employee from a committee tasked with assessing whether a fifty-year extension of the Karratha Gas Plant should go ahead.
Whitby announced on Tuesday he had removed esteemed biosecurity expert and Murdoch University Professor Simon McKirdy as co-chair of the committee after advice from the State Solicitor’s Office over potential conflicts of interest given his employment history at Chevron.
Chevron is a one-sixth owner of the Karratha Gas Plant and Northwest Shelf project.
WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch has responded to Ariel Bombara’s scathing criticism of police actions weeks before her father Mark murdered two Floreat women with one of his 13 legally owned firearms.
In a press conference, Blanch confirmed that Bombara and her mother asked police for a temporary 72-hour restraining order to protect them from Mark in the weeks before the murders took place, but said the idea was rejected because the circumstances “would not have met the threshold of the order”.
He said a full internal investigation had been launched into all of the family’s requests for help but revealed the investigation had already begun before Ariel Bombara’s statement was made public.
“A police order is issued where we are concerned about an imminent threat to people,” he said.
WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch will hold a press conference at 3pm today to address the claims made by the daughter of Floreat double-murderer Mark Bombara that she tried to warn police on multiple occasions about his threats and guns.
Hakea prisoners are currently in lockdown with staff refusing to open any cells, concerned for their safety amid overcrowded and understaffing.
The WA Prison Officers’ Union said staff had made the decision to lock down the prison themselves after days of warning management the prison could not be operated safely.
The prisoner count is sitting at around 1170 – 170 prisoners more than the prison can cater for – while operating at 40 to 50 prison officers fewer than what it needed to safely handle that number.
Union Secretary Andy Smith said they had genuine concerns for prison officers’ safety.
Premier Roger Cook has just held a press conference, announcing that the contraceptive pill will now be available over the counter for women aged 16 to 39.
He’s been asked to respond to the comments made by the daughter of Floreat murderer Mark Bombara, who shot dead his wife’s best friend and daughter on Friday.
Cook said the details shared by Ariel about the “sickening crime” were distressing, but he declined to comment on her allegations she and her mother repeatedly tried to warn police about her father.
“We will be seeking clarification from police in relation to operational matters,” he said.
The daughter of Mark Bombara, who murdered two women inside their Floreat home on Friday has released a statement this afternoon.
WA Police have used genealogy to narrow their search for an alleged child rapist from a family tree of 3500 people to just one – a bricklayer living in Perth with no criminal record.
Gavin Durbridge, 54, was 21 years old when he allegedly grabbed a 13-year-old boy who was cycling through Carine Open Space on the way to his friend’s house in October 1991.
He’s accused of threatening the boy with a knife and ushering him into bushland where the teen was blindfolded, gagged and raped.
Durbridge was refused bail in Perth Magistrate’s Court this morning on the basis that the prosecution had “a very strong case”, including DNA, against him, and that the facts were “some of the worst” ever heard by the Magistrate.
To some positive environmental news, scientists have discovered that coral reefs located hundreds of kilometres off the Kimberley coast have avoided mass bleaching despite high summer temperatures.
A team from the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the University of Western Australia have just returned from a field trip to the Scott, Ashmore and Mermaid Reefs.
There had been concerns they would be affected by bleaching after satellite monitoring indicated heat stress had been building to levels associated with mass bleaching and mortality early in the summer.
But a series of cyclones and storms in the region between February and April likely cooled waters sufficiently to avoid a mass bleaching event.
AIMS coral reef ecologist Dr James Gilmour, who led the field work, said it was rare positive news to be able to share in the midst of a global bleaching event, and the fifth mass bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef since 2016.
“It was a relief to observe that the WA oceanic reefs had not been impacted in a similar way,” he said.