It has been more than 30 years since Paula Rogers stepped out of a plane at Perth Airport after leaving her London borough, but the light-filled spring day is ingrained in her memory. “I think it was that iridescent blue light ..
. a day like today would be like Ireland in summer,” she says as we scan the lunch menu in the back corner of Petition , gesturing to the light flooding the State Buildings on the eve of winter. WAtoday reporter Jesinta Burton and Committee for Perth chief executive Paula Rogers at Petition.
Credit: Ebony Talijancich. “You can hop in a car or on a train from the city and be on one of our extraordinary beaches in 15 minutes or the Jarrahdale forrest in 25. “It’s large enough that you can retain an element of anonymity, but small enough that once you get the keys to the kingdom, it just opens: there’s so much opportunity.
“I remember my first meeting with Perth Lord Mayor Basil Zempilas, and he said to me ‘I think you’ll find I’m the most passionate advocate for Perth’, and I said, ‘I think you’ve met your match’.” But the rosy picture Rogers paints of our sprawling city is a world away from the reputation crisis from which Committee for Perth was born. The independent, apolitical advocacy body was founded in 2006, shortly after international travel guide publisher Lonely Planet dubbed Perth ‘Dullsville’.
Since then, the policy think-tank has amassed more than 120 member organisations over dozens of different sectors ac.
