Mayor of Perth, Lisa Scaffidi, said the 1959 commemorative plaque paying homage to the convicted entertainer Rolf Harris will be removed due to community pressure.
Earlier this week the Perth city council unanimously voted that the plaque at St George’s Terrace should be removed.
Harris’s plaque was one of 150 laid into a footpath in Perth’s central business district. The neighbouring plaques honour 149 other Western Australians who have positively contributed to the community in their fields and careers.
Rolf Harris, who has recently been found guilty of indecently assaulting four girls in the UK between 1968 and 1986, has been stripped of many of his titles and honours as those who once admired him have now sever ties and any form of connection to the disgraced entertainer.
He has lost his place in the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) Hall of Fame and his British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) Fellowship and it seems inevitable that he will lose his Commander of the Order of the British Empire from the Queen and his Order of Australia.
Perth city council also voted to remove the footpath plaque outside Harris’s childhood home but it was stolen on the night of the vote.
Harris, 84, is serving a three-year jail sentence in Wandsworth prison in southwest London.
