MILDURA Council this week voted to support Member for Mildura Ali Cupper’s “RateGate” campaign, which is pushing for reform to the statewide rating system.
The campaign, in a nutshell, aims to introduce permanent, structural reform to address the disparity between the cost of regional and metropolitan council rates.
Our local councillors were right to back the campaign, for the reason our rates are so high is not their fault, yet they are the ones who invariably cop it from their community when they are forced to raise them every year.
You see, it’s the system that is flawed, something that I have argued in this column for years now.
The local government rates system in this state is heavily weighted against vast rural municipalities like Mildura and weighted towards rich inner-suburban councils.
The numbers don’t lie and the inequity is jaw-dropping.
As I have written before, an example is that my sister’s house in Box Hill is more than double the value of our house in the Mildura electorate, yet she pays about half the rates we do.
It’s wrong, surely? Twice the value, half the rates?
Rates are essentially a tax to pay for government services, yet they are calculated differently for every council, which is where regional and rural Victorians get stung.
The councils governing Melbourne suburbs like Box Hill generate a higher rate base given their high-density populations, yet they have a far smaller area to govern.
There are fewer parks, gardens and roads to maintain, their garbage trucks don’t have to travel too far, either, which means less time, fewer staff, less money. So these suburban councils win both ways.
In comparison, rural councils like Mildura have a low density rate base to draw from with a far greater area to maintain. They have bins to pick up and pools to service in towns like Murrayville, some three hours from Mildura on the SA border.
How possibly can Mildura Council provide the same services as they do in Camberwell or South Yarra without spending a lot more money?
Mildura should stand up and fight for itself on these issues.
We should not continue to cop it, for we are not less deserving, and that starts with the councillors themselves, and our local state member.
They all understand how high our rates are … they pay them, too.
Ms Cupper said the city-country inequity stemmed from how the State Government distributed federal assistance grants to councils.
“If you tweaked that setting, what you would find is that the increase to ratepayers in the city would be negligible – but it would have a huge impact (for ratepayer savings) in the regions,” she explained.
Mildura Council’s decision to back the campaign is only a small step. But it is a step.
What needs to happen now is for other councils in country Victoria to follow suit.
We just want a level playing field, not one that is tipped completely in the city’s direction.
