WA news LIVE: Triple Zero call made after Nick Martin’s assassination released

WA Police have just released one of the triple zero calls made from the Kwinana Motorplex the night former Rebels bikie boss Nick Martin was assassinated by a long-range sniper who was hiding in bushes more than 300 metres away.

The call reflects the confusion at the scene, with spectators unsure what happened.

“I need an ambulance to the Kwinana Motorplex … there’s been a shooting, I think,” the caller says.

“We don’t know where it’s come from, we don’t know anything.”

The release of the audio comes days after bikie David Pye was found guilty of masterminding the murder and getting a former soldier to carry out the hit in December 2020 as Martin watched the drag races with his family.

“Nick Martin was surrounded by family, friends and young kids – he paid the ultimate price for petty bikie politics, but in the presence of families and young people – an eight-year-old young boy suffered injuries, another person suffered shrapnel wounds – these things should just not happen in Western Australia,” WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch told media after the verdict.

The City of Perth has officially backed a state government plan to redevelop the area around Claisebrook Station.

At the ordinary council meeting last night, council endorsed the submission to the Western Australian Planning Commission as part of a program encouraging more housing and infrastructure around train stations.

Claisebrook is one of 10 stations chosen for the program, which also includes Bassendean, Carlisle, Cottesloe, Glendalough, Morley and Mosman Park.

The scheme will focus on an 800-metre catchment surrounding Claisebrook Station.

The idea was supported, but a city submission on the scheme recommended improvements including the possibility of combining Claisebrook and McIver stations, which are “located impractically close to each other”, and making one “contemporary” station.

The city also recommended including DevelopmentWA land, which lies next to the station, and also more land around Royal Perth Hospital.

The need for a public high school was also raised if more people should move to the area.

The Banjima Native Title Aboriginal Corporation is suing the WA government in the Federal Court to force them to clean up the asbestos contamination on its country from the Wittenoom mine.

Gordon Legal commenced legal proceedings against the WA government in the Victorian Federal Court this morning.

Deputy Chair, and a Banjima traditional owner, Johnnell Parker, said: “We Banjima people belong to one of the most beautiful parts of the world, and our connection to Banjima country runs deep”.

“As Uncle Maitland Parker said: ‘I still cry for country, but that’s imbedded in me, I just can’t walk away from it.’

“Despite the damage, our elders have raised us to be strong and resilient. We carry in our hearts their strength as we continue the fight, to heal our country, to protect it, and to ensure future generations can stand on healthy land and remain connected to who they are.”

The Wittenoom asbestos mine closed 60 years ago but the mined asbestos has made the surrounding area extremely hazardous and forced the closure of the Wittenoom townsite.

The group says Banjima people have the highest rates of asbestos cancer in the world and want the government to remediate contaminated areas.

The Banjima people are also seeking redress for the devastation the mine wrought over the past eighty years.

Gordon legal senior partner Peter Gordon said the relocation, dispossession, exploitation, and erosion of the cultural integrity of the Banjima nation will take generations to repair.

“But the longest journey to clean up the largest contaminated site in the Southern Hemisphere begins with a single step.”

WA Police have just released one of the triple zero calls made from the Kwinana Motorplex the night former Rebels bikie boss Nick Martin was assassinated by a long-range sniper who was hiding in bushes more than 300 metres away.

The call reflects the confusion at the scene, with spectators unsure what happened.

“I need an ambulance to the Kwinana Motorplex … there’s been a shooting, I think,” the caller says.

“We don’t know where it’s come from, we don’t know anything.”

The release of the audio comes days after bikie David Pye was found guilty of masterminding the murder and getting a former soldier to carry out the hit in December 2020 as Martin watched the drag races with his family.

“Nick Martin was surrounded by family, friends and young kids – he paid the ultimate price for petty bikie politics, but in the presence of families and young people – an eight-year-old young boy suffered injuries, another person suffered shrapnel wounds – these things should just not happen in Western Australia,” WA Police Commissioner Col Blanch told media after the verdict.

Here’s what’s making news across the nation and around the world:

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has been forced to evacuate from The Lodge, his residence in Canberra, while police searched the premises following a security threat.
• Two men have been arrested over the kidnapping and murder of elderly widower Chris Baghsarian, who was abducted from his Sydney home in a suspected case of mistaken identity.

• Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has demanded ministers find savings and delay spending to avoid adding fuel to the inflation fire ahead of a budget that insiders say will be pitched as a belt-tightening exercise.
• Novo Nordisk’s next-generation weight-loss drug CagriSema has been labelled obsolete before it even hits the market after the pharma giant’s trial results failed to match the performance of existing obesity drugs from rival Eli Lilly.

Good morning and welcome to our live news blog for this Wednesday, the 25th of February.

Making headlines today, Western Australia’s population – particularly its construction workforce – is likely to be materially impacted by the mammoth construction program required to get the Brisbane 2032 Olympic Games off the ground.

A new deep dive by the Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre into WA’s population found the west and Queensland were already locked in a tight battle for labour, given the states’ similar economic profiles – and it predicted the Olympics would pull more workers to the east.

Meanwhile, environmental groups claim the risk of toxic chemicals to groundwater in WA’s Kimberley was downplayed in the EPA’s recent approval of plans for a controversial fracking project in the region.

Documents from Texan-owned Black Mountain Energy, which cited the region’s sparse population as the reason risk to human health would be low, were provided to the EPA during the assessment of the company’s proposed Valhalla project.

Stay with us as we bring you the news of the day, as it happens in WA.