The Howard Government’s sixth budget brought down last month held few surprises. With the Federal election due later this year (the latest it can occur being 12 January 2002), the welfare reform package of $1.7 billion over the next four years to assist low income earners, especially those adversely affected by the GST, had been widely predicted.
In spite of recent State elections, by elections and opinion polls showing a drop in support for the Howard Government, and with the backdrop of an economic slowdown, there was little in the Budget to assist struggling rural and regional communities and no joy for the unemployed or under employed.
Speaking at the recent Tasmanian Local Government Annual Conference, Economic Development Consultant, Peter Kenyon said that some 60 percent of Australia’s inland towns are currently dying or losing businesses. More to the point, he added that for many of these towns their biggest export is now young people leaving the area to find work.
Across the nation, Councils and communities are not prepared to sit back and die but are fighting back. However, adequate resources to maintain the built infrastructure and natural assets of a locality are vital for social wellbeing and economic growth. Councils, already strapped for cash in meeting these needs, have little to fall back on to provide a safety net for disadvantaged residents or for economic/community development initiatives.
To provide these services and programs, a fair and adequate share of Commonwealth taxes for Local Government goes without saying.
Although the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) welcomed the announcement in the Budget of an extension to National Heritage Trust funding for environmental initiatives, it has criticised the Commonwealth’s failure to address the serious shortfall in national road funding or to reform intergovernmental financial relationships.
ALGA predicts that, based on forward estimates, by 2004-2005 total road funding will fall by 25 percent in real terms. ALGA President, Councillor John Ross, said that the Government has missed a golden opportunity to build on last year’s Roads to Recovery initiative.
Moreover, the vexed issue of Local Government funding, through Financial Assistance Grants (FAGs), will result in Councils receiving a mere 0.65 percent of Commonwealth taxation receipts (excluding GST) in 2001-2002 , a drop from 0.67 percent in 1996-1997. By 2004-2005, ALGA estimates this share will fall to an alarming 0.60 percent.
Councillor Ross points out that this decrease equates to Councils receiving $266 million less, at a time when community demand for services is growing exponentially.
As a key platform in its campaign to ensure the concerns of Councils and their communities do become election issues, ALGA is calling on all federal political parties to commit to providing Local Government with a built in growth element in FAGs funding. It is seeking a constant one percent of Commonwealth tax receipts (excluding GST).
In the current political climate with people seeing governments as aloof and not listening, Councils everywhere have a great opportunity to press this message home within their local electorates. Failure of political parties to take notice may well rebound on them, via the ballot box, later this year.
