Colin Barnett believes open-range zoo would be a winner for Perth branding strategy

Colin Barnett’s government gave Perth a world-class footy stadium, Elizabeth Quay and the Perth Children’s Hospital — but the former premier regrets not being able to deliver an open-range zoo and reckons WA should revisit the idea to solve Perth’s branding woes.

In a wide-ranging interview on The West Live today, Mr Barnett discussed how his Liberal government approached the last mining boom and how the Premier Mark McGowan must use his enviably economic position to generate tangible benefits for West Aussies.

“What concerns me about the last year or so, and I’m talking at a State and Federal level, is that a lot of money has been spent but there is not a great deal to see from it,” Mr Barnett said.

He said some of the expenditure, such as JobKeeper, was understandable in a crisis like the pandemic but the onus was now on WA’s Labor Government, with its total control of Parliament, to deliver on a multibillion-dollar surplus resulting from a booming iron ore price.

And with the City of Perth convening a panel to come up with a branding strategy to sell our capital city to the rest of the world, Mr Barnett said his open-range zoo concept, which was lampooned at the time, was still an ideal option.

Mr Barnett originally pitched the idea in the months before the 2017 State election, proposing the zoo be established on a 700ha parcel of land in picturesque Lower Chittering to lure Asian tourists.

The zoo, which would have taken five to 10 years to complete and cost up to $100 million, would have been home to African savannah animals such as rhinoceroses, lions and giraffes as well as native species.

People made fun of it and I thought, ‘How short-sighted is that’. You need to not only build things, but also to build pride and confidence in the State.

But, of course, the Barnett government was not re-elected, so the idea went the way of the dodo.

“That would have been something that really attracted people to this State,” Mr Barnett told The West Live.

“People made fun of it and I thought, ‘How short-sighted is that’. You need to not only build things, but also to build pride and confidence in the State.”

The open-range zoo is not the only idea the former premier had for rebranding Perth. He urged decision-makers to look to our northern neighbour for inspiration.

“If you want one other little bright idea, something that happens in Jakarta, on a Sunday cycle to Perth, you know, lock the city down in a sense, keep the traffic out on a Sunday morning and get people to walk and cycle into the city,” he said.

“We need to bring people into the city and see it in a different light.”