Perth Voice Interactive

TIM WINTON worries about our boys.

The celebrated WA author says Australia has to rethink how it helps youngsters make the transition to manhood, saying we’re miserably failing them at the moment.

“I think one of the problems we have is that we don’t have clear and mutually understood pathways to manhood,” says Winton.

“There are no rites of passage for a male in Australia, there’s just getting pissed when you’re 18.

“We patronisingly affirm and admire other people’s rites of passage and their traditions, if we can safely exoticise them if they’re from Asia or Africa or if they’re indigenous, but when it comes to our own we get all creepy and weird about it.

Ticking time bombs

“And that’s dangerous.

“We don’t enable our boys to grow by giving them appropriate language for their emotions. So we are surrounded by men who are emotional infants.

“What that comes out as is men wandering around the streets as ticking time bombs, with this unfocussed rage that’s just burning away.”

Winton says it’s a path he could have easily found himself on after an early life marked by near-tragedy and alienation.

In his latest collection of essays, The Boy Behind the Curtain, the author tells of sitting in the family’s loungeroom in Albany, staring down the barrel of his old man’s rifle at neighbours walking by. (Ironically, he’s now in the firing line of my questions; as a near neighbour I’d have likely been in his sights 45-odd years ago).

“To some degree it’s inexplicable, except I was trying to cope with this sense of besiegement, having moved to a new place, feeling that everything was us and them, that I could somehow reduce the world to – to objectifying my neighbours,” he says of his struggle to fit into the whaling town’s lower-class suburb Spencer Park.

Winton shudders to think of the consequences had someone spotted his odd hobby.

“We all know that the earlier you come into contact with the justice system, the poorer your outcomes later in life.”

Moral grounding

Winton says he was saved by his parents’ strong moral grounding — though his provocative questioning made him the wayward lamb in their church — and his discovery of writing.

“I’ve been really lucky, I’ve been liberated by language, from my origins in a state housing area, state schools, working class,” he says.

He says society will be a much safer place if men are taught a “safe language” to express their feelings rather than bottling them up.

“Women have every right to feel afraid of men as a result of the consequence of this emotional infancy.”

The Boy Behind the Curtain is Winton’s most intimate writing, revealing the episodes in his early life that had the most impact on him.

He says reaching middle age and financial security has given the opportunity to be a bit more reflective in his writing. He looks back in astonishment at his prodigious early output (“I put out 11 books in 10 years, that’s unbelievable,”) and says he can understand now why the literary establishment labelled him their “enfant terrible”.

To them he was like a whirlwind, but the label stung and he just wanted to fit in: he just didn’t know how to say it.

The Boy Behind the Curtain

Hamish Hamilton

by STEVE GRANT

RE-INVENTING Barbie dolls with burqas is a bold move for an aspiring artist given the current climate, but Perth College student Miranda Fox says she’s not having a go at Islam, just consumerism and notions of assimilation.

Fox was one of two students from the college chosen to go in the Year 12 Perspectives exhibition at the Art Gallery of WA, which opens January 28.

One of Fox’s Burqie™ dolls parades a Targot-branded burqa. She’s not opposed to the controversial headwear, but would hate to see them appearing in major stores simply because they’re profitable.

She says a gun-wielding Ned Kelly barbie in a plated burqa exposes hypocritical attitudes about violence in Australian culture, while a third featuring images of Uluru is meant to make people reflect on their own status as an immigrant.

Ms Fox says she’s only been researching Islam for a year and isn’t sure how Muslims will react to the artworks, but hopes they will provoke discussion and make people question whether immigrants should “blend in” before they’re accepted.

“It’s just to illustrate that we shouldn’t make judgements on other people. We can’t assume that they’re one thing when they’re not just because we don’t understand”, Ms Fox said.

“It’s meant to be so over-the-top that people go ‘woah’. I don’t want people to take away from it that I’m attacking the burqa at all … this is an attack on our culture more than anything.”

In contrast, Melissa Clements’ artwork celebrates Western culture with a nod to Renaissance painter Caravaggio, whose use of the “ciaroscuro” technique was formative in Baroque painting.

by TRILOKESH CHANMUGAM

VINCENT mayor John Carey has announced his resignation, which will be effective January 30.

As Labor’s candidate for Perth Mr Carey’s up against incumbent Liberal MP Eleni Evangel at the March state election and had previously flagged staying on until its outcome was known.

But with Vincent already having to hold a by-election on February 24 to replace former councillor Laine McDonald, the mayor says his resignation will avoid the need for a costly second by-election or the uncertainty of someone acting in the position for most of the year.

Right choice

“Had I stayed on later we may have had an acting mayor for an extended time … or the cost of having a third election in the year. I believe it’s the right choice for Vincent ratepayers,” Mr Carey said.

Ms Evangel had called for his resignation in March to prevent conflicts of interest during his campaign, but Mr Carey says there’s been no problems.

“There is a clear code of conduct that guides my behaviour and I have always stuck to that.”

He says he’s running for state because “residents keep raising issues that a mayor can’t fix, issues that are simply being ignored or poorly handled by the current state government.

“I believe we need a change in government. It’s lost its way, there’s a lot of issues that I’ve dealt with at Vincent that is really in the state jurisdiction: That is planning reform and local government reform, and a lot of that is set by the state government.”

While the Opposition has grumbled about development assessment panels giving state-appointed experts the majority say over big developments rolling out across Perth, leader Mark McGowan has stopped short of calling for them to be abolished.

But Mr Carey says if elected he’ll go into the party room calling for the DAPs to be dumped outright.

“My view is abolish them.”

“Particularly for the city of Vincent where we are actually trying to get a better design [for new developments], and I have full confidence in the council that they would be able to assess these larger buildings that are being proposed and not just give away these bonuses.”

Mr Carey wants the transparency and accountability platform he’s pushed at Vincent imposed on all councils, including online registers showing conflicts of interests, meetings with developers, or the pay package details of elected members and senior staff.

Mr Carey said he thought a few major developments marked his time as mayor; ushering in more transparency, sorting out the finances, a slew of liveability improvements like town centre upgrades and bike lanes, and replacing old CEO John Giorgi with new boss Len Kosova.

“The toughest of those three decisions was the change in the CEO,” he says.

“The toughest time was when I first started and led the council through significant reform which has not only led to a new CEO but a new financial director, new planning director, and a new director of community engagement.

He’s had his barneys in his time as mayor, including a year of niggling questions from a couple of local traders from the public gallery, and criticism from former mayor Nick Catania over ending the CEO’s contract and a developer contact register.

He’s also crossed swords with Perth lord mayor Lisa Scaffidi, first over her favoured plan to take over the juicy bits of Vincent during council mergers and then later following a Corruption and Crime Commission report into her failure to declare travel freebies when he called on her to resign.

But he says the occasional detractors in the public gallery haven’t got him down, and he gets good feedback when he’s out manning the mayor’s stall at festivals and events: “People come to council often because they’re deeply concerned by an issue, or perhaps angry, and that’s fair enough, I get that … when you’re actually on a stall and people are coming up to you saying ‘hey great job,’ you realise that’s a small snapshot of a much wider community.”

by DAVID BELL

MORE public open space for cramped Vincent is the aim of a new plan floated by councillors Emma Cole, Dan Loden and Susan Gontaszewski.

The trio put up a notice of motion at Tuesday’s council meeting saying they want a 20 per cent increase in parks, fields, ovals, piazzas and the like.

It’s been an ongoing issue for the city and likely to get more prickly as its population grows from 37,000 to a projected 54,000 in the next 20 years.

Currently Vincent has about 8 per cent open space, while WA Planning Commission benchmarks say it should be at least 10 per cent.

Territorial clashes

There’s already been territorial clashes between soccer players and dog walkers, while last year the Voice also revealed “doggie mafias” ruling some parks and not playing nice with unaligned pooches considered troublesome to the civilised crowd.

Cr Cole says even though Vincent’s not looking too bad percentage-wise for open space, some people have a long hike to their nearest park or piazza, especially in parts of Mount Hawthorn.

There’s a few options on the table for increasing open space, from buying up land to cheaper solutions like closing off low-usage roads and turning them into mini parks.

Cr Cole says one spot that could make for some easy open space is “the scorched earth patch” next to the community garden at Woodville Reserve.

“You could easily open that up to Namur Street, provide access and make that useable,” she said.

Councillors unanimously backed their idea, asking staff to prepare a plan and figure out the costs for the 2017/2018 budget.

by DAVID BELL