Kate Emery: Let’s do something at Cottesloe Beach before global warming does it for us

Rising sea levels will redevelop Cottesloe’s foreshore before the council gets around to it.

Then, perhaps, Cottesloe will have what some residents surely want: an unsullied beach they can stroll to in thongs. Stroll or float.

I have no strong view about the suitability of Andrew and Nicola Forrest’s vision for the prime Indiana Teahouse site, which controversially includes a private hotel — as well as fine-dining and better surf club facilities — and was this week knocked back by the council two-and-a-half years after the plan was finalised.

But Cottesloe Beach deserves better than stalled plans, ageing facilities and toilets that make you want to save it for the ocean. And the community deserves more than a decision of this magnitude being made behind closed doors.

The excuse from the council was that the Indiana decision involved confidential commercial discussions. Councils love dropping the old “commercial in confidence” line because it can apply to just about anything they’d rather ratepayers not get their beaks into.

The reality is that inviting the public in can turn an otherwise efficient council discussion into a long, tedious pain in everyone’s arse.

I sympathise with councillors who might want to avoid the headache of a six-hour council meeting, complete with grand-standing residents and increasingly-knackered council officers trying to inject some commonsense into proceedings.

But that’s why I’m not in local government.

Cottesloe Council is within its rights to knock back a design it said didn’t deliver enough of a community benefit (or give sufficient clarity on financial risks).

Arguably that’s what it’s there to do: the community votes for council and if council is a bunch of NIMBYs — I said if — it’s because that’s what the community wants.

But it’s an inconvenient truth that Cottesloe Beach doesn’t just belong to locals — it belongs to all of us. And, as the former member for Cottesloe, premier and council sparring partner Colin Barnett once observed: not everyone wants to go to the beach and sit on the sand.

The next question is whether the State Government will step in. The answer is almost certainly: not in the near term.

Part of that is because there is no simple mechanism for it to do so, the site’s ownership being more complicated than a Christopher Nolan movie. Indiana is on a public beach reserve, which falls under the Lands Minister’s responsibility. However, it’s held by the Town of Cottesloe, which in 2019 agreed to let the Forrests’ Tattarang group take over the lease, but still needs to approve any design before it gets to the WA Planning Commission.

Just last year the State Government overrode another western suburbs council, stepping in to ensure WA’s first children’s hospice would be built on the site of the former Swanbourne Bowling Club, despite opposition from the City of Nedlands. But intervening to give terminally ill kids clinical support and end-of-life care is a slightly different scenario to using the power of the government to ensure Twiggy’s wealthy mates have a lovely place to stay when they visit.

There may also be a view that wading into a western suburbs bingle to help two of WA’s richest people close to an election, even an election the government couldn’t lose if Steven Bradbury was Opposition Leader, would be unwise.

That may be especially so, given the Cottesloe Council has been getting no love from the State or Federal government for its $22 million foreshore redevelopment plan, which is separate to the Indiana plan and would include more recreational space, an amphitheatre of grass terraces and a pedestrian piazza.

Maybe the lack of enthusiasm has something to do with the optics of giving taxpayer money to a perceived wealthy council, even if Cottesloe operates off a comparatively small ratepayer base. But we can’t have it both ways: if Cottesloe Beach belongs to us all, the Government can’t expect the council to carry the can solo.

The good news is that change is possible — even in Cottesloe.

Once upon a time a plan for a skate park in Cottesloe was thought to be too contentious, with flyers warning of the “drug dealing” and “gang activity” that would inevitably follow.

The skate park opened this month and has been deemed a success.

Did take seven years though.