General News
10 July, 2024
Outback councils on life support, says Queensland alliance
Expectations on councils are at an all-time high.
There is an urgent need to decentralise state and federal funding decision-making as 80 per cent of Outback councils face becoming financially unsustainable.
That’s the message from the Western Queensland Alliance of Councils (WQAC) in its submission to the federal government’s inquiry into local government sustainability, which is being closely monitored by mayors and councillors across the nation.
According to North West Queensland Regional Organisation of Councils (NWQROC) executive director Greg Hoffman, the findings and recommendations of the inquiry will provide an important insight into federal ambitions to address the increasing cost-shifting and service delivery burdens being placed on local government.
Mr Hoffman said the expectations on councils were the highest he had witnessed in a four-decade career in local government.
He said the federal government needed to acknowledge that councils were no longer just about “roads, rates and rubbish.”
“Councils in rural and remote areas do not have the ability to raise revenue like bigger council areas in the cities,” he said.
“But, at the same time, the number of services that our councils are expected to provide are much bigger than coastal councils – in fact the council is often the biggest employer in the North West regions.”
“It makes it essential our councils have good support from the federal government. If there is a service that the community needs or expects to be provided, then they usually turn to council to fill that void.”
The WQAC submission quotes a recent Queensland Audit Office report that found 20 of the 24 WQAC member councils were at high or moderate risk of becoming financial unsustainable, with 18 Western Queensland councils incurring a cumulative operating deficit of more than $330 million over the past decade.
Mr Hoffman said repeated budget deficits combined with a heavy reliance on federal and state government grants to provide basic services demonstrated the need for an urgent overhaul of how monies are distributed by government agencies to assist councils.
He said more autonomy needed to be given to the ‘on the ground’ decision makers who understood the practical solutions within the community.
Mr Hoffman said the simplest solution for federal government to take would be to increase the Financial Assistance Grants, which is untied to any specific projects and thus provided more options for local government decision makers.
“We need to get the message across that investing in local government pays dividends for state and federal government,” he said.
A report launched at the Australian Local Government Association general assembly last week found that councils could boost Australian GDP by up to $7 billion annually if they were sustainably funded by the federal government
An example cited in the report was that a $1 billion dollar investment in local government road maintenance would deliver a $3.5 billion increase in real GDP.
The federal inquiry committee has so-far only held public hearings in Canberra, however a spokesperson for the committee said it was expected hearings would be announced in the coming weeks that will include other locations across the country.