Another prospectors’ group slams Coolgardie mining rates hike

Another prospectors group has joined the push to punish the Shire of Coolgardie for its near doubling of mining rates in 2025-26.

Amalgamated Prospectors and Leaseholders Association State president James Allison said the shire was making its ratepayers suffer for its own “gross mismanagement” and should be put into administration.

The Shire of Coolgardie last month voted to raise its unimproved value mining rate from a rate-in-the-dollar of 0.236670 for the 2024-25 financial year to 0.455263 for 2025-26.

This followed revelations in March the shire would have a closing 2024-25 budget deficit of $6.64 million, rather than the $627,000 initially forecast.

A torrent of criticism has come the shire’s way, led by the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies and the Eastern Goldfields Prospectors Association, with both organisations asking Local Government Minister Hannah Beazley to intervene to strike out the increase.

Mr Allison, who was in the Goldfields this week, said the shire was trying to get prospectors to stump up for their financial shortfall, “which is wrong”.

“They’ve got a $6m hole in their budget now and they can see a way of getting it out is increasing the rates,” he said.

“They want the ratepayers of Coolgardie shire to basically finance or refinance their gross mismanagement of their funds and their budgets that’s been allocated to them.”

He said not only would prospectors be affected, but also local businesses within the shire.

“To attract people to an area and to keep them in that area you’ve got to be competitive, and if you’ve got these huge rates going on there, the small prospectors and everything, they’re going to go somewhere else and they’re not going to take up those leases,” he said.

“At the end of the day the towns, both Kambalda and Coolgardie, will lose because those little prospectors that are all around, they shop in those towns, you know they support them, and if they go then the town loses and that’s what a lot of people don’t see.

“It’s bigger than just a rate increase, it can actually affect some of the small businesses within those towns.”

Mr Allison, who believes the only way to fix the shire’s mismanagement is to replace the council, has written to Ms Beazley.

He said he suggested Ms Beazley should appoint an administrator to investigate the budget deficit and “call fresh elections” to appoint a new council.

“I said that she needs to come up here and do basically what they did a couple of years ago with the Perth city council, which is terminate that entire council,” he said.