City of Bunbury shuts down Youth Advisory Committee proposal to use precinct to support youth mental health

The City of Bunbury has shut down a proposal by its own youth committee to use a space at a new multimillion-dollar skate park in the CBD to support mental health, with one veteran councillor saying it was time to “start saying no” to young people. The motion to investigate the feasibility of the city youth advisory committee’s recommendations on how to use the Koolambidi Woola building — based on a survey of more than 1000 youngsters — was blocked by an eight to five vote at an ordinary meeting last week, in a decision that has left the group’s youth mayor scratching her head. The precinct opened earlier this year, featuring a skate park, multi-sports court, parkour areas, mini-golf, beach climbing net, and event and performance space, as well as an indoor youth services building. The YAC, led by youth mayor Mikaela Kerwin, spoke to 1250 young people about how to best use the indoor building to support mental health and create a “safe hangout place” for children and teenagers, and documented their recommendation to councillors. It comes after the group — which was formed to “provide guidance to the Bunbury City council on issues affecting Bunbury and Bunbury-Geographe youth” — was appointed to the steering committee for community engagement for the precinct at a council meeting in 2019. But Bunbury councillors voted against a motion requesting the city chief executive investigate the recommendations made in the KW precinct proposal and report back to the YAC about its feasibility. Councillors Gabi Ghasseb, Marina Quain, Cheryl Kozisek, Tresslyn Smith, Wendy Giles and Karen Steele all voted against the proposal, as did Michelle Steck and Betty McCleary, who both spoke against the proposal during the meeting. Mayor Jaysen Miguel and councillors Amanda Yip, Kris Plumb, Karen Turner and Ben Andrew were the only votes in favour of it. During the meeting, Cr Steck said it was “not a local government responsibility to provide counselling services”. “It is also not local government responsibility to fund all of those sorts of activities that normally a State Government would fund,” she said. Cr Steck also claimed the investigation would be a “waste of staff time.” Cr McCleary said it was time to “start saying no” to young people. “If YAC would like to start fundraising themselves, I’ll get right behind them, I’d be out there helping them but quite frankly this is extra on top of what we’ve already done,” she said. Miss Kerwin revealed to the South Western Times the main recommendation of the report was to introduce a youth worker to the building so it could serve as a soft entry point for young people struggling with their mental health. She said the disheartening result left her “livid” and felt the council was not very receptive to the ideas of young people. “Our proposal was just a list of things that would be best case scenario for young people so the fact that they completely turned down even looking into how that building is going to be operated is very contradictory to how council should be operating,” she said. “It makes the YAC feel a little bit tokenistic rather than actually genuine youth engagement, which is not ideal for anyone in the community; we’re there to represent a group and then come in with a proposal.” Miss Kerwin said the YAC had received overwhelming support from city staff, including chief executive Mal Osborne. “We actually didn’t receive any feedback (from council) on that proposal before it even went to council, which kind of shows we weren’t really given opportunities to speak to those issues,” she said. “I could have easily responded to all those issues raised but it wasn’t raised prior to the meeting.” During the meeting, Cr Yip urged councillors to vote in favour of the motion, saying it was just an instruction to explore potential possibilities. “I think we owe it to them to look at what can be done down there,” she said. Cr Plumb said he was “perplexed” there was any opposition to supporting Bunbury’s future, while Ms Turner said the city had a “duty of care to look after youth”. “(It is) exactly the sort of thing that we need in the centre of the CBD, let’s do better for our kids,” she said. “Let us investigate it and we’ll look at sources (for) funding ... down the road.” Mr Miguel would not comment as council had already voted on the matter.