Former strategic planner Ric Halse steps up for council election to fight for ‘better deal’ for community

Wanting to fight to get the community “a better deal” from the record-breaking gold price and mining boom, a local resident has put his hand up for election to council. While he would have preferred to stay out of the spotlight, Ric Halse says he has to step up and use his local government experience for the better, so that he can “sleep at night”. Previously working in strategic planning at the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder for 10 years, Mr Halse says he has plenty of understanding of processes and policies that will help get the community better results for the future. “I don’t want to be the one, but if nobody else is going to, and I’m aware of these things, I then have to be able to sleep at night knowing that I know these things and rightly and fairly, the majority of the community don’t,” he said. “I am a community member and I listen to the same things everybody else does, but I’ve had the advantage of sitting there on the other side of the desk and hearing how they come to make decisions. “I think that’s my only strength because I’m in a mining community and I’m not a miner, I don’t have much in the way of accounting or financial experience, but I have the value of having been in that job. “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter, and in this case, this bullshitter knows the rules and how to play by them. “We can’t have leaders who will sit there and have negotiations with the mining sector and just hope we are going to get a good deal out of it. “That’s where I think I’ll be great at the negotiating tables because I know the rules and I know what the outcomes should be for the community.” At a time when the gold price is more than $5300 an ounce, Mr Halse said Kalgoorlie-Boulder should be flourishing, not still struggling and getting overrun by fly-in, fly-out camps. “I could have shot a cannon down the main bloody street and not hit anyone and at $5300 an ounce, if I can’t hit anybody with a cannonball, something is . . . amiss,” he said. “How are we messing up? How can we make it better? This is what I think I’ll be good at figuring out.” Not wanting to make any promises to the community without knowing exactly what he has to work with, Mr Halse said his main focus, if elected, would be on understanding the financial position of the city, and how to best improve it. “If we don’t know what the true numbers are, and I sit here and I say we have to do X, Y and Z, I’ve already bullshitted straight out of the gate,” he said. “I just want to figure out what’s going on. If we are the ones living out in the middle of the sticks, we are the ones willing to take the risk and raise our families out here, we should be rewarded for that, especially when the royalties from the region . . . are so huge.”