Port Hedland council rejects all tenders for key workers’ housing project

The Port Hedland council has rejected all tenders for its South Hedland key workers’ accommodation facility, citing exorbitant costs. The council voted to reject all submitted tenders to develop the housing project and to have the chief executive investigate an alternative staged delivery of the project to enable it to be delivered in a more cost-effective manner. Cr Camilo Blanco requested an amendment to the motion to stop the chief executive investigating alternative delivery of the project, which failed. He said ratepayers’ money shouldn’t be spent on something which was in the State Government’s remit. “I don’t believe we should be spending ratepayers’ money on key worker housing. The State Government is responsible for social housing. We should not be getting involved with this sort of project,” he said. Deputy mayor Ash Christensen pushed back against the amendment and said it was up to local governments to step up when the housing market and higher levels of government failed to provide. “We’ve instigated a project, we’ve lobbied State, Federal and local governments, we’ve asked our advocacy partners to go and advocate on our behalf in relation to this project so, in my opinion, to up and just leave this project altogether would be doing a disservice to all the work we have put into it to start with but also to the people who will benefit from this,” he said. One proposal submitted to the council was more than $18.5 million over the projected $40m budget for the project with annual operational costs estimated to be up to $3.8m a year.