Ivan Dean, Speeches Index

Wednesday 25 May 2011

LOCAL GOVERNMENT AMENDMENT BILL 2011

Mr DEAN ( Windermere ) - Mr Deputy President, I certainly support the principle of the bill also and I do not intend to go over the areas that have already been covered but I will just relate to one or two of the issues.

This comes about as a request, we were told this morning, by councils to bring in the changes that are within this bill today to give the councils a little more flexibility in setting their rates this year and also to offset the revaluations that are occurring in some areas. If you start to look, Launceston again has been revalued and so far I have been inundated with calls from very concerned people about that revaluation process and the impact they believe it is going to have on their rates moving forward. In fact, I had one lady on Sunday night ring me - she left a message during the day - and said that it does not matter what time I get back today, if you are home please ring me. I got back at 11 o'clock at night and I rang her and she was in tears, she was extremely emotional, an elderly lady -

Mr Wilkinson - That you rang her back.

Mr DEAN - Not that I rang her back but because of the plight she sees herself in. What she said, which is common for a lot of people today, is that the home she is living in is the matrimonial home, it has been the family home, and the family has moved out and her husband passed away fairly recently. She has been left with a reasonably valuable property and her valuation has increased this year by over $100 000 and she is trying to calculate what that will mean by way of a rates increase. She even took the course of ringing the Office of the Valuer-General. They took the phone call and she said that they were very polite about it and very concerned about what had gone on but she said they lost her when they said that they had revalued her property by sitting in their office and doing it over the computer electronically. They said they lost her because they had no idea of what her home was like inside and she said it was very ordinary and the valuation did not reflect a true value of that property. She said she finished up breaking down while talking. They would probably recall the phone call and she said that the only option she had was to burn it down. That is what she said to me, 'Burn it down and then the State or somebody else will have to look after me'. It is a pretty sad situation.

It is not surprising that councils are opting for and want different systems on which to set their rates. I believe that a lot of these problems would be satisfied if we did not have 29 councils in this State to deal with. If we had five councils, and that is about the optimum in this State, I think we would be able to do a lot better. I think that the ratepayer out there would see greater support by the way of setting of rates and charges and costs and so on. I believe that we ought to be moving in that direction. I think that if we had a reasonably strong government we would have done that well and truly by now. It does create many issues.

I look at the situation in Launceston and I have spoken to Mr Michael Tidey in Launceston in relation to this bill. Mr Michael Tidey is the Corporate Director, the person in charge of Corporate Services and has the responsibility for setting the rates or at least bringing the rates position to the aldermen for consideration.

When I asked him what he thought about this bill, this was his comment:

'I am supportive of these interim changes and appreciative that there has been an effort to get them through to assist with the 2012 rates.'

He is very appreciative of that and the position that the Government has brought forward.

'In regards to the specifics, the ability to increase the amount of the fixed charge is appropriate from a legislative perspective but its application needs to be considered by councils very carefully because of its regressive effect - increases of cost to low-valued properties. The power to cap the percentage increase in rates is useful in managing the impact of a revaluation. The other matters are really technical issues that do not have a significant effect.'

That was a comment by Mr Tidey and he is supportive of the position. It has been discussed with a number of the aldermen. I think that is their position as well moving forward.

My position is, and I have been on record as having said it on many occasions, that in setting flat rates, in setting minimum rates, there is always that position as identified by Mr Tidey here of putting a greater impost on the lower socioeconomic group areas.

You increase their rates in many respects and you drop the rates of the people living in the higher socioeconomic areas - the localities that attract greater prices. So if you start to level out, and even with this charge today that has been provided for you, you need to be very careful with it because what it does is simply have the person living in a two-bedroom home, a very ordinary home in a low socioeconomic group area having to pay a similar increase to a person who is living in a mansion.

That is where we need to be very careful with this - without making the poor poorer and the rich richer. I have always had a concern about that. I have always said that I would never, ever support a system that goes anywhere near that. That is my strongly held position and I think that is the position of a number of other people. Another point that I wanted to make is the position that Brighton currently find themselves in. Back in 2008, when this was initially brought into being and had a lot of press at the time, a lot of publicity a the time, other councils were being questioned very strongly on why they did not opt for a similar model. I know that Launceston City Council did. I was an alderman and I received many phone calls to the effect of 'Here is Brighton who has set the lead here, and you fellows continue to do what you are doing with the AAV system and all the rest of it.'

At that time the Launceston City Council had taken some advice on this from a well-known solicitor who does a lot of local government work in this State, Shaun McElwaine, and he advised the council strongly against it. That was his advice to that council.

My position is this: Brighton have taken a position on this. They have had legal advice on it as well and their legal advice supports the position they have adopted.

I was interested to hear the comment made this morning in our briefing that when we get a unanimous position from lawyers we will be right in moving forward. I think it was the member for Nelson who mentioned that. I will wait for that to occur. I do not think it is ever likely to occur. If you have some concerns about an issue as to why you would not go down that track, and I would have thought, as I used to say to some of the people contacting me, if I am going to follow somebody, I need to be assured first of all, that it complies with the act under which that action is taken and secondly, that it is in the best interest of all people living in your area. So it must be in their best interests as well as complying with the legalities of an act that you are creating that position under.

They are the issues and, as I have said, I have some concern that an action is now being taken by Brighton. I will be interested in the amendment when it comes forward but at this stage, it would need to be a very persuasive argument for me to support it because I think making changes in legislation on the run is not good. We were told this morning in that briefing - it was a very good briefing and I thank Mayor Foster from Brighton for the way in which he put it as well and the other members and also from the Government's perspective.

I thought it was a very good briefing that certainly satisfied a lot of my concerns and I think a lot of concerns of other people. To make a change at this stage when we are told that this is still being considered, there are lots of areas in the planning that we know are being considered at this present time and we are told that changes could come forward in three, four, five months' time, I think it would be very foolish in my view but I will wait and I will listen to the amendment and the argument as they are presented.

I certainly support the principle of this bill and what it is all about and the fact that it does provide some further flexibility to councils. I know now of some councils that have had budget discussions, and I would suggest most councils have in this State. There would not be too many that have not but I know of one council that is simply already looking at going back and modelling another system on this amendment, so they are anxious that it gets through. They are doing another model to present to a number of the aldermen so I will be interested to see what happens there but I do support the principle of the bill.

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