THIS week we hear from East Perth resident Tamara who has spoken up about the events and decisions that led to her spending Christmas without her children. She has since spent three festive seasons apart from her 7-year-old daughter, and even longer from her 12-year-old son. She is now a resident at St Bart’s Women’s…

ONLINE voting was a notable omission from the state government’s new reforms for councils, and it was a smart call: Online elections can’t work if we want our voting to remain private and trustworthy.  Many of the proposed changes released last week were based on the 2020 report from the Local Government review panel, which…

ANDREA ROWE is an osteopath of 17 years’ clinical practice with eight years of tertiary level study and two health science degrees. She owns and runs a private community clinic which provides employment for nine West Australians and serves thousands in their health choices. She is not an anti-vaxxer, as she and her three children…

OUR series of tales from the Vincent Local History Centre returns this week with Julie Anglesey’s ‘Recollections from My School Years at St Mary’s 1971-1978’, one of the entries from this year’s local history awards. I ARRIVED at St Mary’s, as  the Aranmore College girls’ school was then known, as a nine-year-old in 1971.  What…

NORTH PERTH resident MARY GRAY is an environmental scientist and long time advocate for the bush and its inhabitants. This week she tells us what we can do in our own backyards (or front yards) to fight climate change, calling on us to ditch the concrete and go bush. ACTION on climate change is now…

MORLEY is sad and hurting, but how to turn it around?  In this week’s Speakers’ Corner resident JOSH EVESON takes a look at Bayswater council’s upcoming Morley Activity Centre Streetscape Plan. Councillors vote on whether to endorse it on July 27.  FIRSTLY, I’d like to thank the team that has got the Morley Streetscape Plan…

LINDSAY LOVERING was Healthway’s inaugural arts program manager and more recently Musica Viva’s WA manager. In 2009 he was the recipient of the National Arts and Health Leadership Award and in 2010 was a finalist in the WA Citizenship of the Year Awards for his contribution to Arts and Entertainment.  IT appears the state government…

The “three little boys” from Lake Street. THIS week’s Vincent Local History Centre story “Three Boys in Lake Street” comes from Con Christ. The local history awards are coming up again and this was a 2018 winner of the Geoffrey Bolton Award for a written piece on life in Vincent. If you have a tale,…

IN this week’s Speaker’s Corner, Maylands’ MIKE ROEGER shares his love for one of the WA Art Gallery’s rarely seen treasures, hidden from the public for decades. SOMEBODY told me the Art Gallery of WA was closed for renovations. Fake news! Fake news! It’s open. Enter off Beaufort Street — the former police courts. To…

United Nations youth representative Lucy Stronach (left) and the crew from The Y WA. THIS week’s Speaker’s Corner comes from LAURA DUNLOP, youth services manager at The Y WA (the new name for the YMCA). On May 26 the Y’s HQ Leederville was the site of a meeting between local young people and the Australian…