Cassowary Coast Regional Council

The recent inaugural Australian Council of Local Government meeting in Canberra was an historic, unprecedented occasion in acknowledging the importance of local government and in recognising that the present three spheres of government in this country need reform.

The take home message from the federal government is that local government must meet the challenge to introduce sound asset management systems. The promise from the Prime Minister is that if local government improves its performance, financial assistance will follow.

Indeed most of the problems in the Cassowary Coast Regional Council stem from a legacy of poor asset management in the past.

The initial $300 million announced at this meeting as infrastructure funding is as much to do with countering the current economic slow down as it is with helping meet local governments’ infrastructure needs.

Any assistance, any time, is welcome. However our region at $357,000 is to receive significantly less than the $450,000 Australia wide average grant. It is interesting to compare our grant with other similar councils’ grants. We are a category 4 council and this category received amounts from a maximum of $2,144,000 to our $357,000, the lowest amount, with an average of $915,000.

I’m pleased the federal government is using objective, not subjective, measures to determine the relative shares. It just so happens that the objective measures don’t help us.

Every council receives a generous minimum of $100,000 to which is added a component for councils with increasing populations.

The Cassowary Coast Region is very definitely a growth area, but the figures used to determine growth unfairly penalise us, as they are affected by population changes bought about by Cyclone Larry.

The third component of the grant is based on the methodology used to determine the Federal Assistance Grants. Our region has never fared well in receiving these grants and I wrote to the Grants Commission a couple of months ago pointing out deficiencies. Their response was that the methodology will be reviewed. We are being disadvantaged by relatively high land values and low rating amounts in the dollar.

All cane growing areas are similarly disadvantaged. Government is effectively saying we do not charge out rate payers enough so we will penalise you. This is very unfair and offensive to our rate payers, who pay more than the Queensland average, on incomes lower than the state average.

In truth all councils fare poorly at the present time, hence the need for recognition and reforms. Direct commonwealth funding used to be 2% of taxation revenue and is now 0.7%. Local government needs a fair share of taxation revenue rather than handouts entirely at the discretion of the giver.

The Prime Minister may well head down this path but before he does he wants local government to manage its substantial assets properly – and I have no issue with this approach.

It will be very interesting to participate in this new federal/local government partnership, with the constitutional recognition of local government that may form part of the process.

In the meantime the CCRC will need to decide where it will spend the $357,000. Not hard when the back log is $160 million!