Blacktown City Council has called on the New South Wales Government to resume its responsibility for library funding.
“The original agreement with local councils was that the State Government would fund 50 percent of the cost,” said the Mayor of Blacktown City Council, Stephen Bali.
“Over time the State has almost completely walked away from this, and now only funds seven percent,” he said.
The Local Government NSW conference adopted Blacktown City Council’s motion that the NSW Government provides increased recurrent funding for public libraries.
“NSW receives the lowest per-capita funding for Public Libraries from the State Government of all states in Australia,” said Mayor Bali.
“The intent of the Library Act 1939 was for library funding to be met equally between the state and local governments, but State funding has all but vanished over many years.
“The NSW Government now only provides seven percent of Public Library funding while Local Government provides 93 percent.
“Nearly half the state’s population are library users, so keeping them on side would not be a bad idea,” he said.
“Some 44 percent of people who live in NSW have library cards and there were 35 million visits to local council libraries recorded in the 2014/15 period.
“For many people the library is the face of their local council and, for a growing number of residents, it is also their main access point to the State Government via websites such as Service NSW accessed from PCs in their local Libraries.
According to Mayor Bali, Deputy Premier (and the responsible Minister) Troy Grant reported to the Legislative Council in 2015 that a decision on a future funding model for Public Libraries would be made at the end of the Fit for the Future process.
“We therefore request that the funding model be revealed to show an increase in funding for public libraries,” he said.
