WA news LIVE: Drug driver jailed over fatal Baldivis crash ...

A Bushfire Watch and Act is in place for people in an area bounded by Taylor Road to the north, Clarkson Road to the east, Walyunga National Park to the south and Great Northern Highway to the west in parts of Bullsbrook in the City of Swan.

Aerial support is on the way to help firefighters with the emergency.

Keep up to date at Emergency WA.

Police Minister Paul Papalia has used parliamentary privilege in his second last question in parliament today to launch an extraordinary attack on Basil Zempilas’ former (as of today) Churchlands campaign manager Cam Sinclair.

The attack was over his involvement in an anti-gun reform group.

Papalia said Sinclair’s marketing agency Ammo Marketing helped build the WA Firearms Community Alliance website and accused him of being an architect of the campaign to actively attack firearms reform.

Minister Paul Papalia.Credit: AFR

“He is also the person who helped architect the campaign to actively attack firearms reform at the outset, firstly, spreading false rumours about me online. He is the person who designed that,” he said.

Sinclair is the WA Liberal party’s digital marketing strategist and through Ammo Marketing he helped facilitate the poll for a mystery businessman that triggered a failed leadership challenge of Libby Mettam earlier this week.

He declined to comment but earlier this week told WAtoday Ammo marketing worked for a range of conservative groups around WA.

On Thursday Sinclair confirmed he had stepped aside from the role as Zempilas’ campaign manager but the Liberal HQ backed him to remain at the wheel of their 2025 digital election strategy after he issued an apology to state director Simon Morgan for not alerting him to the potential conflicts of interest by facilitating the poll.

Papalia then turned his attention to Zempilas, challenging him to publicly support the Cook government’s gun reforms, particularly given he was seeking to represent Churchlands where Jenny Petelczyc, 59, and her 18-year-old daughter Gretl were shot dead by Mark Bombara in May.Zempilas declined to comment.

The gun reforms were due to be implemented next year after the release of a suite of regulations.

Ammo Marketing has made no secret of their relationship with the firearms group, spruiking their work on their Facebook pages.

A woman whose son was jailed over a motorbike theft that almost cost him his life has been removed from the courtroom after she lashed out at the judge.

Kathy Penny yelled, “where is the justice for my son?” after District Court Judge Mark Pevy sentenced Ronaldo James Cockie, 20, to two years in prison over the incident.

Ronaldo Penny is in a critical condition.

Cockie was arrested and charged over a series of car thefts, attempted break-ins, and the theft of the bike from a home in Duncraig in August 2022.

The incident made headlines after the bike’s owner, Debbie Bute, raced after Cockie and his co-offenders to “see where they were going” and ended up crashing her car, causing Cockie to come off the bike.

He was left with a traumatic brain injury from the incident, which his lawyer today argued should afford him some leniency in his sentencing.

Levy agreed, but said aggravated burglary came with a minimum term of two years in prison.

Penny stood up from the back of the court and yelled: “How? Where’s the justice? He has suffered enough from what that woman has done.”

Bute was given a suspended sentence for her part in the incident.

“For my son, where is the justice for him?”, Penny continued to yell as her son cried in the dock and orderlies tried to remove her from the court.

“Eye for an eye, ride or die. F--- you.”

Penny was evicted from the courtroom, but then re-entered, saying: “You started it Your Honour. That’s my son.”

The court was told Cockie was on home detention and had cut off an ankle monitor before taking part in the crime spree.

Sticking with question time, and WA Premier Roger Cook has poo-pooed reports from WAtoday’s east coast colleagues at the Sydney Morning Herald last week that a $500 million figure was at the centre of a meeting with NRL chairman Peter V’landys to secure a Perth-based rugby league team.

Roger Cook has taken a personal interest in securing an NRL team for Perth.Credit: Trevor Collens

Cook met with V’landys last week after the chairman asked the WA government to kick in $120 million ($12 million a year over 10 years) to ensure a team was established in the west.

The Herald reported that Cook’s proposal presented to the NRL was worth up to $500 million in funding and infrastructure investment.

But in response to a question from Nationals MP Peter Rundle, Cook flatly denied that figure.

However, Cook – a self-confessed “leaguer” – reaffirmed his commitment to bringing the NRL west, and said it would be a huge economic boost to the state as east coast teams travelled here.

To the final question time of the year – and of this term of parliament – and what started as fairly lacklustre affair has roared to life thanks to a Dorothy Dixer to Treasurer Rita Saffioti asking her to compare Labor’s past eight years in government to the Barnett government years.

Saffioti quickly turned her answer to the Liberals’ reluctance to have Treasury to cost their election commitments in the lead-up to next year’s election.

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She then suggested the Liberals get the “mystery businessman” who commissioned a poll that triggered a leadership challenge against Libby Mettam this week to do their costings.

“Who’s going to do it? The businessman?” she said.

“The elusive businessman is out there in the shadows.”

Saffioti then took aim at the Liberals for not having a shadow treasurer 100 days out from the WA election, after Neil Thomson stepped down from the frontbench this week over his role in the leadership challenge.

“One hundred days out, and you have no shadow treasurer … you’re not going to send your commitments to treasury because we have an incredible situation because they don’t trust treasury to cost their election commitments,” she said.

Phew, talk about going out with a bang.

A Southern River couple face 23 counts of animal cruelty after RSPCA inspectors allegedly uncovered a Pomeranian puppy farm operation on their property.

The inspector attended the property in July following a cruelty reports from a WA Police detective claiming there were a number of small breed dogs in “poor condition” at the home.

The 66-year-old woman allegedly told the inspector she was a commercial breeder and owned all the dogs – but was unsure how many she had.

RSPCA inspectors have cracked down on an alleged Pomeranian puppy farm in Southern River.Credit: Adobe Stock

However, the inspector noticed a strong smell of faeces as she approached the big kennel block on the property and allegedly found multiple Pomeranians confined in the kennels – in some cases in groups of up to four – with dirty, matted coats.

While there was a large bucket of water inside each kennel, urine covered the floors, the kennel drains were clogged with faeces, and the dogs only had hard plastic beds with no bedding to lie on.

The dogs themselves had a number of issues, including some with “significant” dental disease; others which were “spinning” in their kennels, indicating neurological conditions; while some were fearful and displayed “abnormal psychological behavioural reactions” to the inspector.

The woman allegedly told the investigator she was unsure of the last time the dogs had seen the vet, and had not checked on the kennels that week nor fed the dogs since the day before.

The inspector found there were about 42 dogs, three cats, three chickens and two dead roosters at the property.

Seven of the animals were surrendered to RSPCA WA that day, while the remaining animals were all either seized or surrendered days later after the woman allegedly avoided taking them to the vet.

The woman, and her co-accused, a 61-year-old man, will face Armadale Magistrates Court in December.

Some good news from one of the fire fronts threatening a community east of Perth: the warning in place for residents in West Toodyay has been downgraded from emergency to watch and act.

However, DFES warns there is still a threat to lives and homes, but fire conditions are improving.

The bushfire is still not contained or controlled, and is moving west/south-westerly.

Road closures are still in place, including Toodyay West Road between Julimar Road and the railway crossing.

Power to more than 500 homes and businesses has also been affected by the fire, in suburbs including Toodyay, Chittering, Julimar, Coondle, West Toodyay and Moondyne.

For more information on outages, visit the Western Power website.

For the most up-to-date information, visit Emergency WA, call 13 DFES (13 3337), follow DFES on Facebook, listen to ABC Local Radio, 6PR, or news bulletins.

To our courts now, where a 30-year-old woman who was high on drugs and speeding before fatal crash in Baldivis has been jailed for 9½ years.

Evie Butterworth had methamphetamine and cocaine in her system and was at times speeding almost 50km/h over the 100km/h limit when she crashed into Abbey Sheriff’s Nissan X-Trail on the Kwinana Freeway near Baldivis in January 2023.

Evie Butterworth, top left, has been jailed over the crash which killed Abbey Sheriff (bottom left) in January 2023.Credit: 9News Perth

The impact sent Sheriff’s car careening across the freeway, and it rolled several times over the verge and bushes before coming to a halt on a bicycle path 94 metres from the point of impact. Sheriff died at the scene.

During Butterworth’s sentencing in the WA Supreme Court on Thursday, prosecutors told the court one witness, who had been driving about 100km/h along the freeway, described Butterworth’s car flying past her so fast that it felt as though she was standing still.

Butterworth pleaded guilty to manslaughter earlier this year, and on Thursday her lawyer told the court she had been “haunted” by her actions every day.

The court heard Butterworth was a functioning meth addict, used the drug on a daily basis, and had a previous conviction for driving under the influence of meth.

Justice Alain Musikanth sentenced Butterworth to nine years and six months behind bars, backdated to when she was taken into custody on September 1, 2023.

She will be eligible for parole, but will be disqualified from driving for 10 years after her release.