As Victoria’s focus shifts to economic recovery from the pandemic, the Government will not support substantial change to how general rates, exemptions and alternative rating arrangements work, which would risk creating financial uncertainty during the recovery period. The report claims the rating system is not broken.

The Labor Government says in its response that it will support ratepayers in financial hardship, improve transparency and consistent decision-making across councils, and build a fairer system. The Government will adopt 36 of the review’s 56 recommendations in full, in part or in principle.

In other words, they ignored 20 of the recommendations. Let us evaluate the three areas they are claiming they will improve-financial hardship, transparency and community engagement.

Editor Comment: by refusing to address changes to rates paid by category of rate payer and rural rates paid versus metropolitan areas, the Govt has missed a golden opportunity to make significant reform in this area that is crying out for issues of inequity and unfairness being addressed. As such, this enormous volume of work which took a few years and took submissions from ratepayers, Councils, business groups and more looks a little like wasted time for outcomes that are more tinkering than structural significant changes.

Hardship policies.

Among the most significant measures, the Government claims to improve how the system can better support ratepayers who are struggling to pay their rates and will examine the merits of a valuation averaging mechanism to lessen the impact of sudden property value movements that particularly affect farmers.

Recommendation 31 requires that all Victorian ratepayers have access to consistent billing, debt recovery and payment difficulty assistance and that the use of council’s coercive powers (e.g. legal action and debt collection) are only ever measures of last resort. The Govt is awaiting for a further report from the Victorian Ombudsman’s ‘Investigation into council responses to ratepayers in financial hardship’, expected to be completed in 2021 before continuing to work on this point.

Recommendation 32 was the only other in the report on hardship. This recommendation would assign the work of developing new processes and skills to deal with all aspects of payment difficulty to an external non-Council agency with experience in guiding, designing, implementing and monitoring reforms of this nature. The performance of councils should be reviewed two years after implementation of the change program to determine its success in changing practice in the sector and whether further recommendations for improvement are warranted. Govt is awaiting the Ombudsman report before working on this as well.

Improve Transparency policies.

There are 9 recommendations for improving transparency within the report.

The Govt supports the inclusion of all rate differentials on the rates notice. It supports the retention of the current maximum fixed charge of 20% of rates collected. Waste charges are to reference all efficiencies and costs of service when arriving at the waste charge component. A common rates notice template will be developed across all Councils to reflect these changes. The owner and occupier if different will both be listed on the rates notice. Councils must have a 4-year rate strategy developed that aligns with their Council plan and policies.

South Gippsland Council already comply with these recommendations which were brought in by the previous Councillor group. Finally, the Govt supports the recommendation that a single point of contact within the Valuer Generals department for those who wish to complain about their rate notice. A streamlined form will be developed for this purpose.

Community Engagement

Only three recommendations on community engagement are supported.

Recommendation 12 has the ratepayers being asked if they want to see all differentials on the rates notice, recommendation 14 wants to ensure that local councils continuously improve appropriate application of differential rates and receives training to achieve this goal. Council administrators must also support incoming Councillors in the Councillor induction period after an election.

Recommendation 50 says that a sector wide culture development program be established to assist councils to develop the governance, leadership, skills and knowledge required to engage communities in a manner consistent with the policies and practices set out by the Local Government Bill 2020.

All the recommendations and the Govt response can be viewed on our website.

Southgippslandvoices.com

The South Gippsland Council response sent by the then Acting CEO was well written and worth a read. This submission can be viewed on our website.