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Dramatic vision has emerged of a police car being chased by an allegedly stolen four-wheel-drive in Kununurra following a crime spree in the early hours of Wednesday.
Police in the northern Kimberley town had responded to several reports of anti-social behaviour in the area, including alleged burglaries and the theft of two Toyota Landcruisers and a Toyota Prado.
About 2am on Wednesday, officers came to an intersection following reports of two cars driving “recklessly and dangerously”, a WA Police spokesman said.
“Police attended the area, and activated their emergency lights and sirens, however it will be alleged, the drivers failed to stop,” he said.
“Between 2am and 5am, numerous attempts were made to intercept all three vehicles throughout the area.
“These attempts were terminated due to public safety concerns and the alleged erratic manner of driving, including following police vehicles.”
WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch told Radio 6PR the chase was part of a police strategy to draw the alleged offenders away from populated areas.
“So when you see footage of a car behind a police car, often people go, ‘Is that the police running away?’” he said.
“We do have a strategy in those circumstances, we call that situation an ‘aggravated vehicle aggression’ … but the idea is to get people away from populous areas and then use police capability and tactics to disable the vehicle.
“And we’ve put a lot of effort into this since about 2022 to make sure we do it as safe as possible in what is a very high-risk environment.”
Blanch said police got “extremely frustrated” when they arrested the same young people “over and over again”.
“But that is our job, we will always be out there keeping our community safe and arresting people when they commit crimes,” he said.
“But I think as a community we should all be concerned when 10-year-olds are in stolen cars, late at night, driving around towns, and may have been arrested for the 30th or 40th time.
“I think that speaks to a much broader problem, particularly around homes, parenting and those types of issues, and substance abuse particularly, and domestic violence in homes and why your kid’s out at night.
“But my assurance as the police commissioner is; my police officers have a plan, we’ve arrested these offenders, and we’ve done it as safe as possible, and people are not injured as a result of the way we’ve gone and done our plan.”
The cars were later abandoned and eight juveniles fled on foot but were “quickly located and apprehended by police”, the WA Police spokesman said.
Four of the children were referred to the juvenile justice team, while another four have been charged with several offences and will appear before the courts at a later date.
The WA government has enlisted the help of sports stars to drive its family and domestic violence messages home during the 16 Days in WA campaign.
Athletes from netball, rugby, basketball, athletics, hockey, tennis, volleyball, cricket and gymnastics will sign up to the 16 Days in WA pledge to help end family and domestic violence in the state by calling out violence on or off the field.
Family and Domestic Violence Minister Jessica Stojkovski.Credit: Hamish Hastie
Family and Domestic Violence Minister Jessica Stojkovski said harnessing sports stars’ influence would help carry the message through the broader community.
“We also know that sporting teams, they work on culture, they work on teamwork, and we want to harness this to work on culture and teamwork in our community, to talk about stopping family and domestic violence and to talk about respect in our community,” she said.
West Coast Fever captain Jess Anstiss.Credit: Getty Images
West Coast Fever captain Jess Anstiss is one of the first starts to sign up to the pledge.
“I am determined to see an end to family and domestic violence. I’m committed to playing my part in this movement,” she said.
According to WA Police statistics, FDV rates reached their highest in a decade in 2024-25, with 42,000 offences recorded.
“I will never shy away from reporting of family and domestic violence numbers going up because I firmly believe that the more we talk about it, the more we talk about it in our communities, in our families, on our sporting fields or on our courts, the more people become comfortable to actually seek the help that they need or to make those reports,” Stojkovski said.
Fortescue has produced its highest-ever first quarter of iron ore shipments after delivering 49.7 million tonnes for the first three months of the new financial year, according to the company’s latest quarterly production report.
The latest figures represent an increase of 4 per cent from the previous period last year and include 2.1 million tonnes from its Iron Bridge project in WA’s Pilbara region.
Hematite shipments contributed 47.6 million tonnes of the total.
Fortescue shipped 49.7 million tonnes of iron ore in the first three months of the new financial year.Credit: Bloomberg
According to the company’s latest figures, total ore mined was 60.1 million tonnes and a total of 20.8 million tonnes of ore processed, respectively 5 per cent and 6 per cent higher than the first quarter of the previous year.
Fortescue Metals chief executive Dino Otranto said the company had delivered a strong start to the new financial year.
“We reached important milestones this quarter, including the successful syndication of a Renminbi-denominated term loan and the establishment of new global partnerships that will help drive our profitable decarbonisation,” he said.
“We’re continuing to see delivery of this on the ground, with 10 electric excavators in operation and construction of our 190MW solar farm at Cloudbreak now more than one-third complete.
“We’ve also started to implement our revised Hematite life of mine plan, underpinned by the inclusion of the recently acquired Blacksmith Project.
“The plan optimises material movement and orebody use, ensuring Fortescue remains positioned as a low-cost, capital-efficient operator, maximising value across our operations.”
There’s been a stand-off between elderly climate protesters and parliament security this morning with police issuing several move-on notices to the group for standing too close to the south entrance of the building.
Vic Earle, 80, travelled to Parliament House from Mandurah and was asked to move on by police.
He said the action was “anti-democratic.”
Vic Earle was one of several climate protesters handed move-on notices outside Parliament House.Credit: Hamish Hastie
“We’re supposed to be a democracy, and to me, it’s just not working. We’ve been asked to move on and if I don’t, this 80-year-old, harmless, silly old bugger will get arrested just for holding a placard complaining about our democracy, or increasingly, lack of it,” he said.
Greens MLC Sophie McNeill offered words of encouragement to the group and defended her support when asked whether it was appropriate to be coaching the protesters.
“They’re my friends, basically, I’m not coaching them. The poor thing’s just got a move-on. He’s come all the way from Mandurah,” she said.
“He’s a hero. I think these climate protesters are heroes.”
The protest group was told by parliament staff they could protest a few metres away from the building entrance or head to the front of the building.
Earle said the “message wouldn’t be as strong” where they were told they could protest.
Oscar Allen says the departure of key people at West Coast who “always had my back” played a major role in his exit from the Eagles.
A lifelong Eagles supporter who co-captained the club this year, Allen switched to back-to-back reigning premiers Brisbane during the recent trade period.
Former West Coast skipper Oscar Allen is off to Brisbane.Credit: AFL Photos
After a career-best season in 2023 when he kicked 53 goals in a struggling team, the key forward has since been plagued by injury issues.
West Coast declined to match the Lions’ offer for Allen, with the club accepting pick two in this year’s draft as compensation for losing the 26-year-old.
Allen described his last year with the Eagles as “eye-opening”.
“I’ve been really fortunate that early days of my career, West Coast looked after me incredibly well,” he told Mix94.5 on Wednesday.
“Clearly there’s been a lot of change at the footy club, so people that potentially always had my back in the past probably aren’t there in those roles anymore, so that was a big change for me.
“It clearly got to the stage where what (the offer) was to stay here was significantly different to leave.
“When everything came out publicly with me this year, the level of support I received from different people was probably different than what I expected it to be.”
Allen was forced to front a press conference with West Coast football boss John Worsfold when it became public he had met with Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell.
The Lions had already met with Allen before Hawthorn and were well advanced in their attempts to convince him to switch clubs.
But a captain meeting with a rival coach during the season did not go down well with the club and Eagles supporters.
A fit-again Allen will go from the wooden spooners to the competition juggernauts, becoming the Lions’ spearhead to replace Joe Daniher, who retired after the 2024 grand final.
“I get to go to a situation where I know that I’m really wanted, they’ve put all these things in front of me and been really clear that they wanted me,” Allen said.
AAP
Police are calling for witnesses to a major three-car crash that saw five people, including two young children, taken to hospital on Wednesday.
A Kia Carnival van, Mazda 6 hatchback, and a Nissan Navara ute were all involved in the crash on Nicholson Road in Oakford just before midday.
The crash closed the road for about four hours as emergency services worked to help those injured.
The scene of the Oakford crash.Credit: 9 News Perth
The 58-year-old man driving the Nissan Navara was airlifted to Royal Perth Hospital with life-threatening injuries before being transferred to Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital where he remains in a critical but stable condition.
The 32-year-old woman driving the Kia Carnival, a four-year-old girl and an infant who were also in the car, were taken to Royal Perth Hospital and Perth Children’s Hospital, while the 36-year-old man driving the Mazda 6 and his passenger, a 30-year-old man, were taken to Fiona Stanley Hospital.
A WA Police spokesman said their injures were not life-threatening.
Police have urged anyone who might have witnessed the crash, or who had dashcam vision, to contact Crime Stoppers as road policing group officers continue to investigate the incident.
This year has been a horrific one on Perth roads.
According to the Road Safety Commission, there have been 159 crash deaths, the highest in more than a decade, with the previous peak of 154 deaths in 2016.
Here’s what is making headlines elsewhere this morning.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has declared she is not going anywhere and rubbished suggestions Barnaby Joyce is about to take over from her as the boss of the conservative minor party. “My attitude is if someone can do a better job than I can, fair enough, but don’t write me off at the moment,” she told Sky News last night.
Two men have tragically died after being swept from Frankston Pier as extreme winds reaching 130 km/h wreaked havoc across Victoria yesterday evening, bringing down trees and cutting power to thousands of homes. Emergency services were called to Frankston Beach shortly before 4.45pm following reports two men were in trouble in the water. Both men were found unresponsive in the water just after 5pm. The pair were winched to shore, but they could not be revived.
Good morning readers, and welcome to our live news blog for Thursday, October 23.
Making headlines today is the warning that Perth’s population surge towards 3.5 million people is due to arrive sooner than expected.
That’s according to a host of experts who gathered on Wednesday for the Committee for Perth’s 2050 Summit, which aimed to “champion a plan for Perth’s future”.
The population milestone was first set out in the Committee for Perth’s 2012 Towards a Bright Future report, but University of Western Australia demographer Professor Amanda Davies told the audience on Wednesday that the city could now hit that figure by 2039.
“This is a very plausible scenario, considering the pipeline projects that we have locked in, and the push factors driving migration,” Davies said.
You can read the full story here.
129 Perth suburbs now have a median house price of more than $1,000,000.
Meanwhile, on the topic of growth, the median house price in our city is tipped to reach a “line in the sand” milestone before the end of the year.
According to the latest data from the Domain House Price Report for the September quarter, Perth prices climbed 1.6 per cent ($15,382) over the three-month period to a record median of $981,259.
Domain chief of research and economics Dr Nicola Powell said the latest growth has Perth’s real estate market sitting just $18,741 (1.9 per cent) below a median price of $1 million and is likely to reach this before the year’s end.
Read all about it here.
Thank you again for joining us this morning. Stay tuned as we bring you more news you need to know.
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