Politics are behind Rottnest Island’s decline

The partial collapse of a Rottnest Island jetty last week was not an accident. It was an accident waiting to happen.

Back in 2003, auditor-general Des Pearson had one word to describe the piece of infrastructure that could so easily have claimed the lives of British tourists on Wednesday.

That word was “unusable”.

There was no quantum mechanics or engineering calculus used to arrive at Pearson’s description.

Army Jetty, as it has been known since construction in the early 1900s, was old, deteriorating and dangerous in 2003.

Pearson knew it was structurally unsound enough to be off limits to boats.

In fact, he knew plenty about how rotten things were on Rottnest when he published his report about the sustainability of the island’s management model and upkeep.

“It has resulted in under-investment in the island’s assets creating a legacy of repair, maintenance and upgrade work for accommodation and infrastructure, which is increasingly critical,” Pearson warned. “The deteriorating condition of the island’s accommodation and essential services infrastructure assets has increased running costs and the risks to visitors, staff and operational continuity.”

Three years later, a young boy died when a brick pillar at one of the island’s cottages came down on him while he was playing in a hammock.

The coroner concluded the brick column did not contain the standard steel rod reinforcement. Audits were done of all island accommodation.

In a similar vein, an audit of Rottnest infrastructure has been ordered in the wake of last week’s jetty incident.

Now that a 48-year-old mother, her 11-year-old son and their 63-year-old relative have broken bones and bruises, an inquiry will investigate whether the jetty was structurally sound enough to remain open to pedestrians.

We can save the taxpayers some money and cut to the chase. The answer is no. Army Jetty was not safe enough for anyone to be standing on it.

Let us apply the same layman’s language as the auditor-general did 15 years ago. The steel and timber supports that held the heavy concrete slabs in position were so badly corroded they could no longer cope with additional weight.

Like a tooth rotting from the inside, the jetty structure was being eaten away. It was only a matter of time before it visibly crumbled.

Media photographs and vision clearly depict the decay that resulted in the near-tragedy. The family who endured the latest unnecessary trauma would be well within their rights to sue the State for negligence. They were victims of the politics of Rottnest.

There are those who insist “Rotto” should stay the way it is and that any talk of making the island a global attraction, and therefore self-funding, is deluded.

“A number of reviews and reports over the decades have identified the same problems time after time,” commented the Rottnest Society in a 2007 policy statement. “But governments of both persuasions have continued to believe the Rottnest Island Authority will ultimately become self-sustaining.”

The society has long argued that governments, including the current one, should give up trying to make the island a “world-class tourism destination” and concentrate on funding Rottnest so it can safely cater for the almost 500,000 people that turn up each year, happy with what the island has to offer.

Why pay tennis stars and Hollywood starlets millions of dollars to promote Rottnest via quokka “selfies” when the island cannot cope with the influx of visitors those campaigns might bring?

How can we lure tourists to Rottnest when the Premier admitted last week that the self-evident erosion of a public jetty had been “missed” by the island’s governing body?

Remember, the 2003 auditor-general’s report, which prompted the then Labor government to inject an extra $20 million into Rottnest funding, did not miss the poor state of Army Jetty.

And it was clear in a 2014 management plan about keeping Rottnest a going concern that the jetty was still a serious problem.

The plan said $3 million was needed to ensure the structural integrity of Army Jetty.

It is simply outrageous that over the course of more than a decade it was openly known that a publicly used facility on the island was, at the very least, potentially dangerous.

Furthermore, the 2014 document made the same points about the island’s future sustainability as the 2003 report.

“Due to the diversion of commercial profits to fund non-commercial services, adequate re-investment into the Rottnest Island Authority’s commercial business and assets is not occurring,” the report said. “The RIA’s revenue- generating assets then run the risk of declining into a state of disrepair. The inadequate re-investment is the historical cause leading to the need for regular government injection of funding.”

The McGowan Government would argue it is trying to cut through the “hands off Rotto” mentality that exists within some influential corners of WA society. It can either continue down that path by ensuring greater private investment on the island, or put more taxpayers’ money into a serious infrastructure upgrade program.

The time for temporary fixes and top-ups is over. The wider public and their government need to accept that history cannot keep repeating itself on the island many people love.

No one should die or almost be killed because the rot has been allowed to set in on Rottnest.