FROZEN, or even reduced rates?

It’s a campaign platform that hovers somewhere between lofty and loopy, but Cockburn East Ward candidate Tarun Dewan says despite the joshing he’s received over it, he reckons it’s achievable.

“Everyone says ‘what rubbish are you talking about’, but I say the first victory is in the mind,” he told the Herald. Having cut his teeth in the community coaching junior footy, he invokes the West Coast Eagles’ amazing turn-around to get in this year’s ALF finals as an example of what a good mind-set can achieve.

He says the keys are to get the council working as a team, and to unlock under-utilised assets across the community.

“Like Uber, which unlocked a lot of under-utilised capacity in the community, or Airbnb.”

• Tarun Dewar reckons he could help deliver frozen rates. Photo by Steve
Grant

Mr Dewan, a Labor member, says while he’s been involved in the community for years, it was a surprise opportunity in the oil and gas industry that gave him the confidence to seek office.

The Indian-born engineer’s company was struggling to get a big project operating in Asia, and after going through several different managers without success he was called in as a last-gasp measure because of his background.

“They said I could do it for three months and they’d see how it was getting on, but I ended up staying for two years and finished the project.

“Suddenly I had a team of 1400 people, and I’d never had so many people under me in my life, and it made me realise I could make strategic decisions,” he says.

But oil and gas can also be a fickle industry and he was made redundant in 2015, freeing up time to run for council.

by STEVE GRANT