Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in relation to this motion, and I have to say I'm a little bit disappointed that the member for Mallee was not a little bit stronger in her motion which calls for reviews and 'looking at'. Where's the demand? Where's the demand to do more for regional councils? As a member who represents a regional electorate—and I have five local government areas. I've got the City of Greater Bendigo and the whole of the Mount Alexander Shire Council. I've got a little bit of Mitchell, a little bit of Campaspe and a little bit of the Macedon Ranges. What these regional shires all have in common is that they are struggling. They are struggling to meet the cost of delivering the services that our community requires, and that struggle, with regard to financial assistance grants, goes all the way back to former prime minister Tony Abbott and what he did to financial assistance grants in his disastrous budget of 2014.

Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey, in their first budget, froze financial assistance grant indexation. That compounding impact is why we're in the mess we are today when it comes to financial assistance grants. Whilst I appreciate the energy in which the Australian Council of Local Government have just said to us, 'Lift them back to one per cent'— I appreciate that, but I say to the Local Government Association that it cannot just be a straight blanket increase to the current formula. The current formula is not achieving its objectives. Its objectives are about financial assistance grants, and let's be blunt—there are some council areas in Australia who do not need financial assistance. The City of Melbourne comes to mind, as well as a number of other inner-city councils that can make more money through parking metres in an hour than what some of our shires in Australia can make collecting rates. This is why we need to review how the financial assistance grants are rolled out, and it needs to be done urgently.

So I say to the member for Mallee: be bolder, be a bit stronger, stand up a bit more for your regional councils and argue for what should be in that formula, because right now we have a local government association who are just saying 'increase' but are not suggesting where that extra funding should go. In my opinion, the financial assistance grants needs to be reprioritised and focused on regional councils, where they have smaller rate bases, larger geographical areas and challenges that some of the metro partners do not have.

In our regions, local governments are quite often responsible for delivering aged-care services, like in my shire of Mount Alexander, or early childhood education services, like in the city of Bendigo. And, whilst they are not the lone providers of early childhood education services, they do provide a benchmark—good-quality early childhood education—that the for-profit sector is forced to compete with, and they have a waitlist. I would like to see them expand their early childhood education offerings, and maybe, if we can get the financial assistance grants correct, they can.

Another shire of mine, the Mount Alexander shire, has more bridges than any other shire in the state of Victoria, and they are constantly looking for ways to upgrade and update their bridges. I was very proud to join them last year and stand with them when they allocated some of their federal funding to fixing one of these many bridges, connecting the community so that they didn't have to literally drive through old McDonald's farm to get to town. These are the daily challenges that local governments face.

Quite often in regional areas, local government is the largest employer. They have the good, secure jobs that support so many in their communities. Not only are they the deliverers of important services but they also have the good jobs.

The other thing that our local governments do is partner with us to deliver funding, and I have to say that, during the last term of our government, the councils in my electorate received more funding in that one term than they did in the entire previous nine years of the coalition. Mount Alexander shire received over $12 million for the redevelopment of one of their precincts. Local governments received funding to restore waterways and from Roads to Recovery and to build vital community infrastructure projects and female change rooms, just to name a few examples. Do not believe the rhetoric and the nonsense of those opposite, because that's all it is.

See this speech in context