OPINION – ALI CUPPER
Right now, a family farmer in the Buloke Shire with a $5 million property is paying more than six times the rates of the owner of a $5 million property in Stonnington in inner Melbourne. That might pass the pub test in Toorak, but it falls well short in Birchip.
It’s why rate reform has been one of the main focuses of my work since being elected to State Parliament in 2018.
After months of consultation and refinement, my RateGate campaign has culminated in an official policy proposal sent to Victorian Local Government Minister Shaun Leane last week.
It proposes a two-part solution to the scandalous imbalance between metro and rural-regional rates.
The first part calls on the State Government to give an immediate lifeline to the state’s 13 most disadvantaged councils – including Buloke and Yarriambiack in my electorate. This would be in the form of a $30 million annual recurrent grant distributed to those councils based on their respective needs.
The money for this recurrent grant scheme would come either from consolidated revenue, or through a minor amendment to the Federal Government’s Financial Assistance Grants program, allowing the State Government to direct more of the federal assistance grants to rural and regional councils.
The second part calls for an equalisation funding system (EFS), which has long been championed by the Victorian Farmers Federation and is the only effective way to end the disparity for all regional councils – including Mildura and Swan Hill.
An EFS – which would set a uniform rate in the dollar across the state, be centrally collected, and distributed back to councils based on need – would level the playing field and could help average rates in Mildura fall by about $800 per year.
This would be a big statewide reform. There would no doubt be pushback from metro councils. But broad-scale, structural reform is fundamentally right, fair and necessary. Rural and regional ratepayers have been copping this economic injustice for far too long. Enough is enough.
I’m awaiting for return correspondence from Mr Leane to see what he thinks.
Watch this space.
