PERTH student Shayla Keane has won the Melbourne International Comedy Festival’s 28th Class Clowns grand final. Class Clowns is one of the festival’s developmental programs, helping hundreds of young people develop their comedy potential with access to workshops and audiences, and cultivating the next generation of funny people and those with unique voices. The Santa…

AGE was no barrier for Mt Lawley’s Esther Finkelstein last weekend, the 87 year old taking out one of four main sessions at the WA Mahjong Festival. The one-day competition attracted 88 players from around WA, including a contingent of 13 from Bunbury and one intrepid Queenslander. Ms Finkelstein said she was hooked on Mahjong…

THE City of Bayswater has become the latest council moved to ditch its annual Australia Day citizenship ceremony. During an hour-long debate last Wednesday, Bayswater councillors discussed the result of consultation with its Reconciliation Advisory Committee and a survey of 431 Bayswater residents conducted over June and July 2023.  Councillor Sally Palmer said the advisory…

ARTAGEDDON is officially over. The Albanese Labor government this week announced the first Perth recipients of funding aimed at shoring up small-to-medium arts organisations which were hammered under the former Abbott government. Back in 2015 former arts minister George Brandis blindsided arts organisations when he stripped $105 million from the Australia Council to set up…

AN enrolment boom in Edith Cowan University’s music teaching courses could help get singing and playing back in Perth classrooms, and even go some way to reversing declining academic outcomes. A doubling of enrolments in ECU’s postgraduate courses has been driven by a one-year graduate diploma in teaching aimed at aspiring school teachers who’ve completed…

SMALLER local publishers will be disproportionately affected by Meta’s removal of it news tab from Facebook and Instagram says a lobby group. Facebook’s news tab disappeared from Australian accounts on Tuesday after Meta thumbed its nose at the federal government’s news media bargaining code, introduced in 2021 to make digital companies pay for news content they…

THERE’S a simple way governments across Australia can support traditional media organisations and counter the power of Meta. It’s simply to stop shovelling billions of advertising dollars to its US-based owner Mark Zuckerberg each year, and instead spend that money with local publishers, big and small. There’s something perverse about the federal government’s handwringing over…

THE City of Perth has launched its first major advertising campaign under the two-year-old City of Light brand. The campaign “Shine bright in the City of Light” follows a group of dancers enticed away from rehearsal by a glowing doorway to explore the city’s attractions with some skaters. Lord mayor Basil Zempilas said it would…

A HISTORIC cottage in Northbridge has been trashed by squatters after being left vacant for years. The state of the Shenton Street cottage has Museum of Perth secretary Ryan Mossny concerned it’s both a safety hazard and a sign of a broader problem with the protection of the city’s historical buildings.  Mr Mossny said “some…

AUSTRALIA’S prospective nuclear submarines will be up for discussion next month by medical professionals  who’ll put the former Morrison government’s controversial AUKUS deal under the microscope.  The Medical Association for Prevention of War will be hosting a panel focusing on how the AUKUS deal will impact Western Australians as part of a global trend of…