Candidate call to change culture

When Brian Basham stands for Horsham Rural City Council at local government elections in October next year, he will stand for a community he believes deserves a greater voice.

The former police officer, public servant and now counsellor recently revealed himself as the anonymous figure behind a Horsham Rural City Council Watch blog page.

Since late 2018, his posts have discussed and scrutinised council’s actions and motivations, including the City to River Draft Masterplan and rate strategies.

He said Horsham Rural City Council lacked integrity and transparency and it was about time ‘we start fixing a problem’.

“What we need to do is bring council back to where it belongs, and that is to the people,” he said.

“I have a long history in public service and a long history in doing the right things, and I have noticed a trend across the last five to six years in public service, including councils, that public servants tend to do what they think is right, not what the public thinks.

“There’s a big lack of council integrity and scrutiny, and I think we need a change of culture so that people are heard.”

Mr Basham said he moved to Horsham in 2016, at the time of the most recent council election.

He said despite having grown up elsewhere, his ‘fresh eyes’ on the operations of Horsham local government had created intrigue into how the municipality could be better developed.

He said one of the main issues he had noticed was a lack of concern towards business, profit and long-term sustainability of council projects.

“Council at its core is a corporation in perpetuity,” he said.

“It should be running best business practices like any organisation or company, and while concepts now are good, they’re not functional.”

Mr Basham said he believed a key problem was that people in positions of power were trying to turn Horsham into a ‘metropolitan suburb’.

He said he hoped to realign council with its principal role of spending rates on behalf of ratepayers for municipality-appropriate roads, infrastructure and recreation.

“I don’t want to bring big-city ideas here, they don’t work in a small country town,” he said.

“I’d love trains to come back to Horsham, but where is the business case?

“I’d love to see a café on the river, but where is the business case?

“I’m an outsider, I have no particular horse in any race. I’m just interested in getting the best for us out here, and having the best things we can in the most financially stable way.

“At the moment that’s the issue.”

I don’t see that, and