WA local government minister suggests merger for Kalgoorlie-Boulder, Coolgardie councils
Hannah Beazley made the comments in state parliament on Thursday, suggesting the combination of the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder and Shire of Coolgardie — both about 600 kilometres east of Perth — could be a solution to the latter's significant financial and governance issues.
The potential amalgamation of the Shire of Coolgardie and the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder has been mooted for decades, while broader proposals to reduce WA's 139 councils have a similar history.
Ms Beazley rebuffed the Shire of Coolgardie earlier this month when it attempted to hike mining rates by 97 per cent to address a $6.5 million budget deficit.
In state parliament on Thursday, Ms Beazley said "shocking mismanagement" had resulted in questions about the Shire of Coolgardie's ongoing financial viability, describing the council as a "financial mess".
"I will take prompt action and have arranged a meeting with representatives of the Shire of Coolgardie, the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder and the local member [Labor MP Ali Kent], to address the serious concerns in relation to the financial viability of the Shire," she told parliament.
"While I am assured that no malice was intended by elected members, nevertheless, shocking mismanagement and poor governance has occurred at the shire.
"I would urge the shire to do what is right for their community and region and be cooperative in speaking with their neighbouring council at Kalgoorlie-Boulder and jointly support a boundary adjustment."
Kalgoorlie MLA Ali Kent said she hoped both councils would be supportive of the proposal.
"It's a different thing that I believe Colin Barnett put into the act some time ago. A boundary readjustment is just basically redrawing where the boundary goes out to," she said.
"Surely the future of the region is far more critical than what a line on the map is.
"There's obviously a lot of work and a lot of detail that will need to go into the boundary readjustment."
The ABC has contacted both Kalgoorlie-Boulder Mayor Glenn Wilson and Shire of Coolgardie President Malcolm Cullen for comment.
A merger of the neighbouring shires — founded on the discovery of gold at Coolgardie in 1892 and at Kalgoorlie in 1893 — would create one of the physically largest local governments in WA.
The Shire of Coolgardie covers 30,400 square kilometres and has about 3,600 people living in the towns of Coolgardie, Kambalda, Widgiemooltha and the Aboriginal community of Kurrawang.
The City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder is significantly larger in both land mass and population, responsible for an area covering 95,575 square kilometres and about 30,000 residents.
It was created out of the 1989 merger of the Town of Kalgoorlie and the Shire of Boulder.
A review of the Local Government Act in 2020 sparked renewed calls for councils to consider mergers to be sustainable into the future.
There has been some reluctance in the past, with the proposed merger of the shires of Westonia and Yilgarn in WA's Wheatbelt voted down by ratepayers in 2012.
Some councils have been successfully merged, like in the state's Midwest, where the City of Greater-Geraldton was created following its 2011 amalgamation with the Shire of Mullewa.
That followed City of Geraldton's prior amalgamation with the Shire of Greenough in 2007.
The potential amalgamation comes after Shire of Coolgardie councillors this week agreed to put a controversial mining camp on the market to address its dire financial situation.
The council built the 328-room Bluebush Village in Kambalda to take advantage of the Goldfields' latest mining boom.
Figures provided by the Shire of Coolgardie to the ABC confirmed the initial budget for Bluebush Village blew out from $9 million to more than $24.5 million.
The workers' accommodation opened in late 2022 but had lower-than-expected occupancy rates following the demise of WA's once-booming nickel industry.
Shire president Malcolm Cullen said the first step in the sale process was for acting CEO Aaron Cook to prepare a report detailing the requirements for a major land transaction, with cost estimates and timeframes.
"It's a process that we promised the community we would look into, and we are definitely going down that path," Mr Cullen told the ABC on Wednesday.
"It is a great facility and we feel it does create a significant economic benefit for the community of Kambalda being in the middle of the town."
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
17 hours ago
- ABC News
Dire conditions in WA prisons will have consequences for everyone
Most Western Australians are within driving distance of human rights abuses. That's the confronting reality brought into sharp focus by the prison watchdog this week. Few would expect prisoners to get an easy ride, but what is going on behind taxpayer-funded barbed wire fences at Hakea Prison is much worse — both for those inside, and the rest of us outside. Days without fresh air, sleeping on the floor next to a toilet, having to block your ears so cockroaches don't crawl in, extremely limited access to phone calls and almost non-existent education and support programs. "The conditions are still in breach of international human rights," Inspector of Custodial Services Eamon Ryan said on Tuesday, noting he'd raised similar concerns more than a year ago. Those concerns were especially significant, he said, because almost everyone who goes into prison will one day come out. How they are treated while locked up, he said, is what decides who you might be standing next to in the shopping centre or driving alongside one day. "And right now, the conditions in Hakea just simply don't provide any sort of rehabilitation, any sort of possibility for men to improve themselves so they don't return to a life of offending when they're released," he said. That's not good news for anyone, especially because the rest of the prison system is also in a pretty poor state. These issues are almost certainly not intentional. But they are an entirely predictable outcome of two key choices made by successive governments of both stripes. The first part of the problem is that WA's imprisonment rate has been increasing recently from an already high base. It rose 16 per cent between 2022 and 2024, mainly due to the rate of prisoners on remand exploding by 41 per cent. The Justice Department has said those increases can at least be partially attributed to a rise in family and domestic violence offences. Few would argue against those laws — but prison pressures would indicate they were introduced either without understanding the impact they would have on prison populations, or without regard for that impact. The same can be said of other laws which have been introduced over recent years to make it harder for some people to get bail, or to increase the length of their sentence. Hakea is particularly vulnerable to increasing remand rates because it mostly houses prisoners who are yet to be sentenced. Looking across the state though, all but two prisons are either over capacity or above 95 per cent. "The prison system is full and there is no spare capacity for more prisoners," Inspector Ryan wrote. "Likewise, there is no infrastructure capacity available should the need arise in response to a major incident." That squeeze is also raising the risk of a major incident — as shown by a riot at West Kimberley Regional Prison at the weekend. An increasing population isn't a problem in and of itself though. The problem is that sufficient capacity hasn't been built to avoid the situation where three or four prisoners are being crammed into cells designed for one or two people. And this isn't new, with Inspector Ryan's predecessor Neil Morgan calling for urgent funding for new prisons in 2016. No new prison has since been built, just additions to existing facilities. The government has begun work to turn things around at Hakea and more broadly. A state-wide infrastructure plan has been prepared by the department and is currently sitting with government. Corrective Services Minister Paul Papalia told Parliament earlier this month it "seeks to address the challenge of more prisons". Then staff will need to be found and trained to run that prison — a challenge when the WA Prison Officers Union estimates the state is about 1,200 officers short already. And Papalia has said the Corrective Services Academy is running at capacity. "We need to be encouraging people to come into the job," secretary Andy Smith told ABC Radio Perth this week. "People don't go through high school thinking 'I'd love to be a prison officer' [like] they do for police, ambos, teachers, nurses, doctors. "But we've got to do something to get people into this job." Similar resourcing issues plague emergency services, education and health. All are just as important to a well-functioning society. The difference is how they affect a government's chances at the ballot box. As the family member of one recent Hakea inmate said this week, he couldn't have cared less about conditions behind bars until he personally knew the person experiencing them. Regardless of how prisons impact politicians' fortunes though, there's no excuse for a system which breaches human rights. Western Australia does not have poor finances to blame. Instead, the reported human rights abuses — which will only result in angry prisoners more likely to reoffend — are the result of choices by those in power.
News.com.au
18 hours ago
- News.com.au
Liberal senator Michaelia Cash says Welcome to Country ceremonies ‘tokenistic,' don't improve lives of First Nations
Senior Liberal senator Michaelia Cash has given a strong take-down of the 'tokenistic' use of Welcome to Country ceremonies being conducted at official events, stating they make people 'feel good' while turning a 'blind eye to the realities faced' by First Nations people. The view, which differs from the position held by Sussan Ley, comes as the contentious motion was debated at the WA Liberal Party council on Saturday. State members called on the Opposition Leader to state that 'Welcome to Country ceremonies and acknowledgments should not hold official status as they are tokenistic at best and do nothing to improve the lives of our most disadvantaged Australians'. Practically, this means the rituals would not be performed during sporting matches, and official functions like Anzac Day Dawn Services and the opening of parliament. A second motion also called on the federal party to only give 'formal Commonwealth recognition' to the Australian national, and state flags. 'Overdone' Speaking to Sky, Senator Cash stood by her strong support of the motions, stating its been her 'fundamental belief for a very long time'. 'They have now become so overdone, they are tokenistic. But more than this, as a Western Australian, and we live in a big state and there are large Indigenous communities, the one thing I want Australians focused on is not tokenistic gestures that make us feel good whilst we turn and a blind eye to the realities faced in Indigenous communities on the ground.' She said she 'stood with' Indigenous Country Liberal Party senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, and would do so 'any day of the week,' and called for 'practical' policies. 'We want to see all Australians unite and focus on the practical policy outcomes that will make a difference … in the lives of the most disadvantaged in this country,' she said. 'The one thing we should unite under is making a practical difference, a positive difference in their lives. It's my focus … I can be judged for that.' On Tuesday, One Nation senators fuelled debate after Pauline Hanson, Malcolm Roberts, Tyron Whitten and Warwick Stacey turned their backs on the chamber during a Welcome to Country ceremony. Later speaking to Sky, Senator Hanson said she 'had a gutful' of the rituals. 'I have had enough, and I do not want a Welcome to Country and to be disenfranchised from my own country that I was born here,' she said. Minister for Indigenous Australias Malarndirri McCarthy said the act was 'disrespectful' and 'unacceptable' given senators 'represent millions of Australians and that includes First Nations people'. While she said it was improper parliamentary conduct, Senator McCarthy acknowledged that there will 'always be differing opinions' on the matter. 'I expect that people will bring their own personal opinions and views into it, but it really was about the conduct of the Senate and senators, and it was important that we put on the record that all senators in there are there to represent Australians and to do so with dignity and respect,' she told the ABC.
ABC News
2 days ago
- ABC News
WA Liberal Party State Council supports call to abandon net zero, reduce Welcome to Country ceremonies
The WA Liberal Party has supported a motion to abandon a target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, putting added pressure on Australian Opposition Leader Sussan Ley to abandon the policy for the federal party. Delegates at the WA Liberal State Council also approved a motion to get rid of the Indigenous and Torres Strait Islands flags behind the prime minister at press conferences and cut back on Welcome to Country ceremonies. It is understood both motions were carried with an overwhelming show of support when they were read out and without needing to go to a ballot. The behind-closed-doors meeting was held at a hotel in federal MP Andrew Hastie's electorate of Canning, one of only four seats the Liberals now hold in WA. Labor increased its dominance in the state after the May federal election, winning 11 seats, while independent Kate Chaney retained Curtin. As Ms Ley and the party weigh up how to claw back those and other seats around the country, she has ordered a review of the Liberals' energy and emissions reduction policy. The WA Liberal Party's move has thrown open the debate on net zero within the Coalition, with Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce proposing a private members bill to dump the policy. Grassroots Liberals have been making their views known to the parliamentary party, with the South Australian Liberal State Council already abandoning net zero and the Queensland Liberal National Party also due to decide on the matter. The motion at the WA State Council on Saturday was put forward by the Canning Division, in Mr Hastie's seat. It said the WA division of the Liberal Party called on the federal Liberal opposition to abandon the target of net zero by 2050 and to reform "the legislated net zero incentives, subsidies and penalties". It said it wanted the party to "affirm (a) commitment to clean energy, but not at the expense of Australia's economic and national security". Further, the motion called on the federal opposition to "harness Australia's natural abundance of coal, gas and uranium in the generation of stable, reliable and affordable power for all Australians". The motion said its positions should be adopted in light of the fact the three countries responsible for more than 50 per cent of the world's carbon emissions — China, the United States and India — "have no intention of meeting Net Zero by 2050". It also said "attempts to decarbonise Australia are destabilising our energy grid, forcing up power prices and damaging our national and economic security". The WA Liberal Party's Policy Committee put up the motion on the flags and Welcome to Country ceremonies. It called on the federal opposition to adopt a policy where the only other flags, apart from the Australian national flag, to receive Commonwealth recognition should be those of others states and territories or of government institutions, such as the military. The motion also called on the opposition to remove official status for Welcome to Country ceremonies. "While they may originally have been well-intentioned, they are now often divisive and tokenistic and do little to improve the lives of our most disadvantaged Australians," it said.
