Vol. 19 No. 48
FREE PUBLICATION
Wednesday, June 14, 2017
Australian Editorial Award 2016
Call for intervention
V
ictorian upper house politician Simon Ramsay has called on the State Government to intervene in Ararat deliberations over a controversial rates plan.
The Liberal Member for Western Victoria made the call when speaking in the State Parliament’s Legislative Council. Mr Ramsay asked Local Government Minister Natalie Hutchins to delegate Local Government Inspectorate officers to oversee the Ararat council’s final decision-making process on the issue. Ararat Rural City Council created a storm across the Victorian agriculture sector with a controversial vote to scrap a farm differential in favour of a uniform municipal rate across the municipality. The move, designed to achieve rate-paying parity between all Ararat ratepayers, prompted a fierce rebuke from Victorian farming leaders and fearful and at times emotional and angry responses from district farmers. The Ararat council received more than 700 community submissions on the issue and listened to a string of speakers at a packed special meeting in Ararat last week. Councillors will assess submissions before making a decision on whether to rubber-stamp the draft proposal or to change their minds at a meeting on June 27. Under a differential system designed to balance municipal service charges between urban and rural ratepayers, Ararat farmers pay a differential of 55 percent of the residential rate. Mr Ramsay told State Parliament that while farmers accounted for 24 percent of Ararat ratepayers, they already paid 34 percent of the city’s rate revenue. He said that if the council adopted the proposal, farmers would pay more than half of all rates collected in that municipality. He told parliament: “The reason I ask for this intervention is because it is very clear at the moment that landholders in that district look like paying a very severe penalty for being farmers.” Mr Ramsay said the differential had been in place for several years to provide equity across the ratepayer base and ease the cost burden on farmers. “But we are now seeing a basically urban council looking to remove that 55 percent differential and have all ratepayers paying the general rate, which means an increase to that farming community of anywhere be-
IN THIS ISSUE
tween $60,000 and $90,000 a year in rates,” he said. Mr Ramsay is deputy chairman of a parliamentary Environment, Natural Resources and Regional Development Committee and former Victorian Farmers Federation president. He said he had been listening to Ararat district farmer concerns since this issue ‘erupted’ at the start of May. “I was at a meeting at Lake Bolac four weeks ago where 300 very angry farmers banded together to put submissions to the council to stop them removing the differential,” Mr Ramsay told parliament. “My understanding is that the council is hell-bent on removing the differential so the rate burden costs will be spread right across the general community, but at a significant cost to local farmers. “On that basis I ask for the intervention of the local government inspector to oversee the process that currently the Ararat Rural City Council is going through in relation to setting its rate structure for the coming year.”
Discrimination
Victorian farmers have called on the State Government to scrap rates on farmland in an effort to address what it considers an unfair council rating system that discriminates against primary producers. Victorian Farmers Federation wants a fiveyear transition from a rating system – based on total land value – to a new system that would see municipal rates only charged on the house and curtilage on a farmer’s land. The call comes as Ararat Rural City Council considers the introduction of a uniform rating system, which would lead to farm rates rising by 45 percent. VFF president David Jochinke said the VFF feared the move, if successful, would lead to more councils pushing for uniform rating systems at the expense of farmers. “As farmers we carry the greatest rate burden in regional Victoria, because we own more than 60 percent of the state’s land,” he said. “Forcing farmers to pay an ever-increasing share of the rate burden isn’t sustainable and in some cases is driving farmers off some of the state’s most valuable agricultural land.” VFF analysis on the 2014-2015 financial year showed farmers were paying on average two and a half times more in council rates than other regional businesses.
UP AND AT ’EM: Freya Jones of Natimuk shows her delight while taking part in one of a series of activities with artist Jens Altheimer during a ‘Move On’ community project at Horsham’s Art is… festival. This year’s 10-day festival, featuring the theme Footprint: Moving Together attracted a strong audience and participant response. Story, page 7. Picture: PAUL CARRACHER
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