Outgoing Exmouth Shire pres Matt Niikkula reflects on past years as he hands over a better-positioned council

Rebuilding the community’s trust was the top priority for outgoing Exmouth Shire president Matt Niikkula when he was elected four years ago. Now, he believes he is handing over a better-positioned council compared to when he first received it. Mr Niikkula was elected in the wake of a Corruption and Crime Commission investigation into the then-chief executive Bill Price’s signing of a $1m contract for the Ningaloo Centre. “We came in and in an effort to rebuild community trust in the council and the leadership role that we were providing, we picked it up by the feet and shook it and saw what fell out and went about trying to make it the best organisation that we could,” Mr Niikkula said. “We’ve committed a huge amount of our time personally into it, possibly more than most councils around because we were on a mission to get Exmouth back to where it should be.” On top of that, Mr Niikkula said the pandemic derailed all their plans. “It was very hard for a tourism town when all the eggs are in one basket and then to have the rug pulled out from under us,” he said. “A lot of our funding and income to maintain all our services comes from our airport operations and other commercial operations the Shire runs and when that was shut down, I think we did some hard financial management.” Mr Niikkula said he was happy to see community confidence back. “I think overall, our community is quite satisfied with the efforts that we’ve put in,” he said. “I think if I could take anything away from my time, it’s the trust or the bridge that we made again between council and the community, which is the biggest thing to hang the hat on.” Mr Niikkula said it was “back to work” for him and he is now focusing on his retail business, which he has had for 27 years.