• Keith Yong is seeking election to Perth city council in October. Photo by Jeremy Dixon
Keith Yong wants to turn Perth into an international tourist destination.
The Malaysian-born solicitor will run for Perth city council at the October elections.
Mr Yong, 35, wants to make Chinatown and Northbridge cleaner and safer, attracting more tourists from interstate and overseas.
“Cleaning up all the rubbish in the lanes at the back of Chinatown will be a good start,” he says.
“More CCTV and a bigger police presence would also help.
“I want the area to be vibrant with more restaurants and businesses—a real showcase for Perth.
“The sinking of the rail line will connect the CBD to Northbridge and hopefully funnel more tourists up there.”
Mr Yong moved from Malaysia 10 years ago and has steadily built ties with the local Asian community. He is an executive member of the WA Chung Wah association, president of the WA Hakka association and a member of WA Chinese chamber of commerce.
He studied law at King’s College in London and is a partner at Lex Legal on Adelaide Terrace, specialising in property disputes and civil litigation.
“My experience in property law will be handy with all the new developments scheduled to be built in the city,” he says.
Mr Yong is fluent in English, Chinese, Malay, Cantonese and Hakka.
Tim Clifford is an ex-Army reservist and worked 10 years as a FIFO on the mines. Not your typical Greens candidate, then.
Raised with three sisters by a mum who juggled two part-time jobs while training at Tafe, the 31-year-old is furious with Labor for cutting parenting payments to 84,000 sole parents, the vast majority of them women, and transferring them to Newstart.
He says a cut like that when he was growing up would have prevented his mum from furthering her education and kept her trapped in low-paid, transient jobs.
“It means a cut of $60-120 per week from an already over-stretched household budget, which I think is completely unacceptable,” he says.
“It was the difference between a single parent being able to retrain or plan for a future, instead of treading water.
“Politicians have to differentiate between taking away handouts, and taking away opportunities.”
Clifford is running in Stirling which, barring a Mayan-style end-of-the-world disaster, will stay in the hands of Liberal frontbencher Michael Keenan on September 7. Having abandoned the “disorientating” FIFO lifestyle in 2010, Clifford is a public servant in the WA attorney-general’s department and also studies politics, economics and journalism at ECU.
He has quickly established himself within the local Greens, running for the party in the state seat of Mt Lawley back in March.
Clifford wants more high-density, affordable housing built on the swathes of empty land that run along major roads and railways.
“The Stirling local government area could yield anywhere between 23,111 to 61,629 diverse and affordable dwellings,” he says.
“I believe this initiative will help drive the cost of living down and promote a more sustainable, vibrant and connected community within the Stirling electorate.”
The Greens were trounced at the state election—they now only hold two state upper house seats—but Clifford is confident things are on the upswing.
“I think we will do well at this election—refugees, climate change and sustainable living are all high on the agenda,” he says.
Bayswater mayor Terry Kenyon is keeping tight-lipped about whether he will run again for mayor at the October council elections.
In Bayswater the mayor is voted in by councillors, after an election, not by the public. Cr Kenyon would only need to lose the support of one or two councillors to lose office.
The mayor told the Voice he would be happy to comment after nominations close September 12, when he will have a better idea who is standing against him in his ward.
The Voice understands the anti-Kenyon faction is fielding a number of candidates against his allies.
• Richard Offen with Barrack Street: Then and now. Photo by Jeremy Dixon
It was the street which brought the first milkshake to WA and from where a “down and out swaggy” became one of the state’s richest men.
Barrack Street’s history is uncovered this week at the state library with rarely seen photos on display and stories told about its characters.
“There are people like Peter Albany Bell,” Richard Offen from Heritage Perth says.
“He was the chap who introduced the milkshake into WA in the late 1890s. He was of quite humble beginnings, and just like so many of them from that era had little formal education.
“He set up a little shop selling confectionary and soda on Barrack Street.”
It was during a trip to New York that Bell saw vendors mixing milk with vanilla.
The milkshake, along with his confectionary factory at the Albany Bell castle on Guildford Road, saw his empire expand and he ended up with about 20 tearooms across the state.
Barrack Street was where philanthropist Sir Charles McNess made his fortune.
“He’d apprenticed to a tinsmith in the UK. He came here in 1876 and set up an ironmonger shop and a scrap metal dealership, and he made his fortune on that,” Mr Offen says.
“He was a very shrewd businessman and he realised that when the gold rush came he could capitalise on that, and sold mining equipment—shovels and such—to the miners who were going out to the goldfields.
“He built the McNess arcade in 1896 on the profits he made in the ironmonger shop which was known as McNess’s rusty nailshop.”
Snowy McNess used his fortune on charitable works during the great depression, like building state housing and setting up Yanchep national park as a job creation scheme, and was ultimately knighted for his philanthropy. He stayed true to his humble roots, and on receiving his knightship someone remarked he, “looked like a down and out swaggy”.
Not everyone made a fortune on Barrack. The architect who designed McNess arcade—the New York-born and German-trained William Wolf—went broke midway through the project and it had to be finished by someone else. “It was apparently [due to] high living,” Mr Offen says. “He and his family of six and his wife, according to one biographer, lived way above their means.”
The free exhibition Barrack Street: A Time to Reminisce, is on at the state library ground floor, August 19 to September 6. There are also talks on the early days of Barrack Street and the street’s characters on August 26 and 28, they’re also free but book at http://www.heritageperth.com.au
“We made a mistake on solar.” Mt Lawley Liberal MP Michael Sutherland concedes the Barnett government was wrong to cut the solar feed-in rebate from 40c to 20c per unit.
The move had been expected to save $50 million over four years.
Earlier this week, Colin Barnett announced he was scrapping the cut, following a public outcry.
“In my five years as an MP I’ve never received so many emails and correspondence over a single issue,” Mr Sutherland says.
“The feeling was that people had a binding contract which should be honoured.
“The fact that the scheme is a drain on the public purse does not come into the argument.
“Western Power can generate a kilowatt of electricity for about 5c and the government is buying solar electricity back at 40c per kilowatt.
“From what I remember the same type of thing was sending NSW broke.”
In 2010, then NSW Labor premier Kristina Keneally slashed the feed-in-tariff for new entrants from 60c to 20c to curb cost blowouts on its solar bonus scheme.
In 2011 NSW Auditor-General Peter Achterstraat said the scheme would have blown out to almost $4 billion from an initial $362 million if efforts hadn’t been made to rein it in.
The scheme, introduced by the former NSW Labor government, is estimated to have cost state coffers more than $1 billion.
• Alannah MacTiernan and council horticulturalist Gavan Neil-Smith plant the Forrest Park Wall. Photo by Jeremy Dixon
After many years of debate, arguments in the park, and the odd defamation threat thrown in for good measure, the Forrest Park saga is finally nearing an end.
Vincent council’s hoping the newly planted bushes between soccer players and dog walkers will end years of dispute between the two groups.
Mayor Alannah MacTiernan says the council’s now looking at what kind of fence will close off the last gap.
It had initially planned for a seasonal fence, but Ms MacTiernan says it’s negotiating with the Perth junior soccer club to see if the club can instead stick up something temporary during games.
In return, the club will get to stick sponsors’ ads on fencing to grab back a few bucks: “It’d be no skin off our nose, it’d be no deterrent to the community because the barrier would only be up while the soccer was underway,” Ms MacTiernan says.
As to whether the temporary fence will be a permanent solution, the mayor says “I hope so. I think it’ll be a real positive for all parties.”
Marriage is so much more HOW sad that Greg Sehojuet (Voice Mail, August 10, 2013) sees a legal contract between two people as being equivalent to marriage.
Sorry—but the legal rights and responsibilities for same-sex couples are already in place by virtue of Australian governments having already given these relationships effectively the status of de-facto marriages. That boat has already sailed.
Marriage is much more than a legal contract. It is public recognition that the relationship exists. It is an affirmation that the relationship is of value to our society. It is a celebration of two people publicly committing to share their lives, to support each other unconditionally as they journey through their lives together.
Sorry Mr Sehoujet, a “legal private contract” doesn’t cut it. Graham Cowan Haig Park Circle East Perth
Vincent cans frank opinion SINCE when did an opinion equal spam?
It seems the City of Vincent considers any opinion contrary to its own to be spam.
Having posted comments questioning the city’s opposition to amalgamating with Stirling, I was swiftly blocked from many of the city’s facebook sites.
It appears freedom of speech only exists if you agree with Vincent.
At least I offer factual reasons for my opinion, unlike people sucked in by the mayor’s propaganda that life as they currently know it will disappear.
Rhetoric about “dynamics of an inner-city community built around urban villages” and calling Stirling “a ‘70s disco that no-one wants to go to” is all Vincent can manage because its argument is devoid of fact.
The mayor repeatedly states “Stirling’s focus is understandably elsewhere” but never says exactly where this is.
All residents of Vincent are not opposed to the merger. The fact Vincent is using ratepayers’ money to bankroll this campaign is nothing short of a misuse of funds.
Not only is it misusing public funds, it is also not performing its duties as a council. In a recent email from a councillor it was stated, “I’m sure you can appreciate the mayor, councillors and officers have been focused on what the implications are and how we can stop our areas being split”.
No, I don’t appreciate it. I expect the council to perform the duties it is obliged to.
Why isn’t the council spending its time and resources preparing its submission to the local government advisory board?
My guess is it’s because that wouldn’t create anywhere near as much free publicity for the mayor’s federal election campaign as the current circus does.
By the way, the false advertising of a youthful female on the mayor’s campaign poster has not gone unnoticed. What an insult to women! Debbie Saunders Oxford St, Leederville
Risking outbreak TUT-TUT, Chief Chook. You’ve risked yet again a Voiceland outbreak of heart attacks and strokes.
This by neglecting to put a cross reference in Voice Mail: More letters, page 6 (Voice, August 19, 2013). Imagine a contributor, finding nothing on page 4, never turning to page 6.
The heaven-sent free Voice would not, of course, wish to avoid responsibility. Otto Mustard Alvan St, Mt Lawley The Ed says: Only those committing to reading the paper in its entirety get to savour the full flavour of its fruits:)
Smith won’t be missed NOT sorry to see federal Perth MP Stephen Smith decamp. He only made himself available to his close mates and everyone else was fobbed off to staff.
Although some staff were very capable it was never the same. Despite him holding various senior ministerial positions in government, of what use or relevance was he to the Perth electorate if constituents could never access him?
Retrograde step for Labor replacing Smith with an ex-broken down politician who has seen better days. Furthermore, I wish she would cease using images of her granddaughter instead of herself on electoral billboards. George Bouzidis Third Ave, Mt Lawley
Feeling dumped I TOO question the commitment of Alannah MacTiernan (“Flip-Flop MacTiernan?” Voice Mail August 10, 2013).
She urged us to vote her in as Mayor of Vincent with promises to be a strong representative for the next term, then as soon as a better offer comes along she is happy to dump us in favour of a federal seat. Z Han Bulwer St, Perth
A disturbing deflation WHILST taking a stroll through Hyde Park—having taken advantage of the City of Vincent’s excellent cat sterilisation/microchipping subsidy scheme—I came across something disturbing hanging from a Moreton Bay Fig Tree; a deflated Liberal party campaign balloon.
Now, I am aware the environment is not a strong point of the Liberal party, but surely these slobs could clean up after themselves when using our public parks and wetlands?
I wonder what my local Liberal candidate Darryl Moore would have to say about such wanton vandalism, just metres from a family of swans, with four tiny cygnets?
Shame, Liberal Party campaigners!
Clean your act up (and your policies while you’re at it). Michael Lush Stirling St, Perth
Think of the gallants! WEARY gallants continue to drag to safety endearing elderly ladies from the path of juggernauts turning right from Beaufort into Walcott Street.
So much for the CCTV scrutiny of the notorious Mt Lawley intersection.
Filtering such traffic to Walcott Street via Queens Crescent west and Field Street might be less than a perfect solution, yet it would reduce the dangers for all involved, including the gallants.
Such a detour would always signify progress for westward-ho traffic and be less worry for the Vincent Mother, intrepid Alannah MacTiernan.
Queens Crescent westside ratepayers might be nettled, yet this would be nothing compared with its eastside ongoing nightmare. This resulting from the Perth College expansion, courtesy Stirling council. Ron Willis First Ave, Mount Lawley
NA here to help NARCOTICS ANONYMOUS is a non-profit community-based organisation for recovering addicts.
We have 31 meetings weekly in the Perth metropolitan and regional areas.
The function of any meeting is always the same: to provide a suitable, reliable and safe environment for personal recovery. NA members learn from one another how to live drug free and recover from the effects of addiction in their lives.
As a non-profit organisation, many of the meeting venues and other facilities that we utilise have a “not-for-profit” hire rate that we regularly access.
Our decision to hire the RISE venue (Perth Voice, July 27, 2013) was not dependent on receiving a discounted rate. We were informed we could submit an application in writing for a reduction in the venue hire fee, as this is common practice. Regardless of the outcome, we are looking forward to hosting our annual convention at the venue in Maylands, with around 220 members of the NA community coming together to celebrate and support each other over the three-day event from 16–18 August.
Anyone who wants to stop using drugs may become a member of NA. Those who feel they may have a problem with drugs, legal or illegal, including alcohol, are welcome in Narcotics Anonymous. Contact us via 9227 6381 or http://www.na.org.au Vanessa S NA, WA
IAN KER of Vincent Street, Mt Lawley was an inaugural councillor for the-then Town of Vincent, elected in 1995, and served 14 years on council until 2009, including a stint as deputy mayor. If Vincent disappears, he will hold, for all time, the record for length of service on council to the Vincent community.
It was great to see so many people taking an active interest in the future of Vincent on Saturday, but I was left with a distinct feeling of “those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it”.
When Vincent was created in 1994, cast adrift by a City of Perth that did not want it, we very soon discovered the extent of the neglect we had suffered. Infrastructure was run-down and community services did not meet the needs of the Vincent community.
And I remember very clearly the pathetic sight of a huge digger stranded in the western lake of Hyde Park because the City of Perth had “run out of money” for the project—it couldn’t even complete a simple dredging of one lake, never mind the comprehensive renewal project now nearing completion by the City of Vincent.
Now, after nearly two decades of rectifying that and creating a genuine Vincent community, we are being told it is in our best interests to again be swallowed up by the City of Perth.
Speaker after speaker on Saturday spoke passionately of Vincent being unique, of the vitality and diversity of Vincent.
Speaker after speaker spoke passionately about Vincent being different from the largely suburban City of Stirling.
Then they destroyed their credibility by saying Vincent had so much in common with the City of Perth, although I got the distinct impression some didn’t quite believe this.
But where is the diversity in the City of Perth? Where is the vitality? Where are the people a lot of the time? To the extent there is diversity, it is segregated—offices, shops, restaurants and residential largely occupy separate places. In Vincent we value the mixing of these uses.
Yes, Vincent should not be split between Perth and Stirling.
No, Vincent should not be reabsorbed into WA’s business capital.
And to those who say they are only being realistic, I say, in the words of the winner of the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in Philosophy: “It may well be that the impossible can become possible only by being stated at a time when it is impossible.”
After watching the Seth Rogen comedy This Is the End, we decided to hit the CBD for a late Saturday night meal.
By 9.30pm the streets were groaning with biceps, machismo and cheap aftershave. And that was just us.
You’ll need to check with Margaret and David but I think there were more dicks on Murray Street than in Rogen’s jejune movie.
We bravely went al fresco at The Boheme, a swanky restaurant/bar at the corner of William Street.
The menu was modern Australian (braised lamb, pan-seared duck, beer-battered fish) and included pizzas, platters and char-grilled steaks.
Voice colleague David said his steak sandwich ($22) was streets ahead of some of the shoe-leather snags he’d sampled elsewhere.
“I was surprised when they asked how I wanted the meat: Usually a third-rate cut is used in a steak sanga and it’s then seared into oblivion to hide how cheap it is, but this time around they gladly cooked me up a medium-rare steak and served it nicely pink,” he said.
“The tangy red onion marmalade was a nice bitey foil to the rich house barbecue, and the vegies were obviously all really fresh—a good show.”
From our street-side location we could see Perth’s nightlife in all its neon-lit glory: dresses with hems that ended above the waist, tribal makeup and lots of swearing.
It was like Jersey Shore on acid—a great spot.
My tasting plate ($24) was the size of a trucker’s wheel and dotted with lamb meatballs, arancini, merguez and grilled haloumi.
It looked good, but tasted a bit underwhelming: the cheese was luke-warm and hadn’t being grilled enough and the vegetarian arancini were insipid.
Things improved when I reached the 5pm position on the plate, where I wolfed down the cumin-infused lamb meatballs.
A handful of merguez—spicy North African beef sausage—continued the exotic theme and went well with the refreshing tzatziki.
Having regained her composure—someone had earlier bellowed “Woo!” through a traffic cone in her ear—Bec nibbled her two “sliders” ($19).
“I wasn’t sure what a ‘lamb and beef slider’ until they were served up,” she said. “Turns out they’re tiny burgers: Moist without being too oily, but still packing enough fatty punch to soak up any of the brews that we sample.
“The relish was nicely sweet and not particularly overpowering, and the bread was chewy and dense.”
Bell was impressed with the range of beers on tap but was irked they sold a schooner (425ml) for the same price as a pint (560ml) elsewhere.
On a busy corner, Boheme is a solid bet for a CBD meal and a great spot for people-watching.
I know the Romans didn’t get to Australia, but I’m pretty sure the French did, so why the restaurant is called The Boheme rather than La bohème is a question only Inspector Clouseau can answer.
• Olga Cironis’s dark self-portrait speaks volumes about migrants’ experience and an inability to communicate.
Stephen Sondhiem’s Into the Woods is a dark, musical look at fairytales, the happy ending of familiar stories turned on their head.
Artist Olga Cironis says her latest exhibition Into the Woods Alone draws on similar themes as she comes to grips with her identity as a Czech/Greek/Australian.
“Fairytales are one way of dealing with life…this exhibition is an extension of that as a narrative,” she told the Voice
The title has no reference to Sondheim’s work but rather is based on her own uncle’s horrified response when she announced she was travelling to remote villages in the mountainous region of northern Greece, where her parents had been born.
Using the tools of a modern anthropologist, including film, interviews, vox pop recordings and collecting artefacts, her visit was no tourist jaunt.
“The investigation of identity and cultural realities outside my the comfort zone of my familiar sphere,” is what drove her.
Cironis immigrated to Australia at 10 but the fall-out of the 1946–49 Greek civil war made a big impact and forms a backdrop to her narrative artworks, along with Australia’s history and treatment of Aboriginal people.
History is manipulated by the victors, Cironis notes.
“For political or personal reasons some histories are manipulated or hidden, like the Greek civil war or particular incidents of the white settlement of Australia.
“In my work I explore the hidden places of personal and collective histories.”
Her cultural heritage enables her to understand that what to most is “accepted and normal” in the dominant culture is not the norm for the many migrants arriving in Australia.
“So I spend lots of time exploring, questioning and satirising the places of difference…I’m trying to make sense of why I feel so misplaced.”
Much earlier in her career Cironis focused on performance art, but stopped because she felt it was too exposing.
With Into the Woods Alone she reveals herself to the camera, with a stark and disturbing image of a woman, lips sewn together, wearing a three-quarter length kangaroo fur coat.
“[Questioning] whether a dominant, political, social or ethnic structure must repress others to maintain its authority and established social order.”
The end result of her mountain sojourn is a mix of works, from text engraved into polished black acrylic disks, images embroidered onto blankets, words gilded onto traditional Greek woven rugs, eerie photographs, hair and feathers woven into antique frames and a glass sphere loaded with the artist’s hair.
The exhibition is loaded with layers of multicultural meanings, Turner Galleries’ Allison Archer says.
“[Underpinning] all is the investigation of not only what it is to be displaced culturally, but what it additionally means if you are a women and an artist,” she says.
Into the Woods Alone is at the Turner Galleries, 470 William St, Northbridge till August 31.
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