'It's going to be a big hit': Queensland council hits residents with stunning 25 per cent rate rise
North Burnett Regional Council raised general rates by 25 per cent in its budget delivered on Monday morning, surpassing Townsville City Council's recent 20 per cent increase for some owner-occupiers.
The council has also increased rates by 19 per cent on sewerage, water and waste along with levies for local disasters, natural resource and landfill management.
Mayor Lez Holtz, who backed the rate rise, said in the absence of government funding the council had to raise revenue to continue paying for its essential services.
He added that the additional revenue would shave off $2.6 million off the council's deficit and bring it down to about $8 million by the end of the financial year.
"We're just trying to meet the costs without having to reach out and ask our state and federal government to assist," he said.
"I'm sympathetic toward the ratepayer that is struggling, the pensioner and those that do not have work.
"It's going to be a big hit."
The council is not the first local government to cop criticism whilst seeking to slug a rate hike on its residents.
The ACT Government, which serves as both a state government and council, recently announced that all Canberrans would be slugged with a $100 health rate levy.
"The levy will raise necessary revenue to fund record investment in Canberra's public health system, which now accounts for more than 33 per cent of the ACT budget," ACT Treasurer Chris Steel said.
The revised levy has only been agreed to for one year and will be reviewed annually.
In Sydney, several councils have also wanted to raise their rates, including North Sydney which wanted to increase rates by 87 per cent.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
West Australian
an hour ago
- West Australian
Paul Murray: Futile bid to hit unachievable net zero target continues to cost households
Anywhere you choose to look, evidence that Labor's renewable energy transition policy is a failure is mounting. For those who don't give primacy to abolishing fossil fuels, the crippling increase in power bills — when we were told renewable energy would make them lower — is enough proof. But for people on the net zero bandwagon, this week has been full of other disappointments. One of the architects of Labor's first attempts at climate change strategies, Professor Ross Garnaut, proclaimed on Monday that the Albanese Government will fail to hit its 2030 renewable energy targets 'by a big margin'. That's because the rollout of new wind and solar projects hit the wall last year, right at the time they needed to be supercharged to meet Labor's policy goal of 82 per cent renewables by the end of this decade. To meet that target would require adding an extra 14GW of wind and 11GW of solar capacity per year. About 7GW was expected to be installed last year. To put that more simply, we would have to install more than 11 wind turbines every day and 3000 solar panels every hour to December 31, 2029. But investment in new renewable energy projects last year was the lowest since 2017. Not one new wind farm has come on stream this year. Labor has put almost all its eggs in the one basket, Energy and Climate Change Minister Chris Bowen's capacity investment scheme (CIS) through which taxpayers underwrite renewables projects. The scheme seeks to take the risk out of the projects by guaranteeing revenue streams for some $73 billion of needed investment by 2027. The eventual cost of those guarantees is unknown, but potentially massive. This week Bowen increased the target under CIS from 32 gigawatts to 40, despite the clear evidence that it isn't working at attracting sufficient new capacity. Garnaut says the CIS distorts the market, arguing the best solution was to introduce a carbon price — what most people regard as a tax — having convinced former Prime Minister Julia Gillard to do just that in 2011. And we all remember how that ended. 'The underwriting falls far short of the levels necessary to reach the 82 per cent target,' Garnaut said. 'The big gap on the current trajectory is growing wider now that demand for power through the grid is growing again with electrification and data centres.' Which seems to make the heavy political focus on these targets pretty dumb if they can't be met. Into this scenario of failure to hit any of the targets rides the head of the United Nations' climate change agency, Simon Stiell, who was a speaker at the same renewables talkfest as Garnaut. Stiell is exactly the sort of person who gives the UN its bad name, a second-rate politician from a tiny Caribbean island nation advanced well beyond his capacity with a penchant for exaggeration. He told the conference run by the Smart Energy Council — a lobby group funded mainly by people selling Chinese solar panels — that unless Australia set itself an even higher renewables target for 2035 we would be responsible for very dire consequences. 'The change is working,' Stiell said. 'Now consider the alternative: missing the opportunity and letting the world overheat.' So a nation that contributes just over one percent of global carbon emissions would be responsible for cooking the planet unless it sets a new unreachable target, having missed the existing one by a country mile? This sort of moral blackmail has characterised the climate change debate for decades and clearly is as useless as the targets Stiell envisages for Australia. It got worse. 'Mega-droughts will make fresh fruit and veg a once-a-year treat,' he warned. 'Australia has a strong economy and among the highest living standards in the world. If you want to keep them, doubling down on clean energy is an economic no-brainer.' Stiell obviously is unaware that Australia's standard of living has toppled since 2022 by the biggest amount of any developed nation, according to the OECD's measure of household income per person. What fools like him will never accept is that the reckless push to adopt renewables quickly has inflated the cost of electricity, one of the main drivers of that loss in living standards. But he believes the dystopian 'alternative' he presented is redeemable merely by Australia setting a new, higher target for cutting emissions. And there's the rub. The idea that an unachievable target has merit because it lifts ambition and effort is hollow. What it really does is distort economic reality and inflate costs. But in the climate change game, these targets are the currency for buying political power as we see being played out within the Liberal Party. An opinion poll emerged this week claiming that support for the transition to renewables is growing, up from 53 to 58 per cent since April. The SEC Newgate Mood of the Nation survey of 1855 respondents found 64 per cent backed the 2030 target and 59 per cent endorsed the commitment to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. That result is unsurprising given that most Australians have been comprehensively misled about the reliability of renewables and their ability to meet demand in a post-coal world. And many climate change opinion polls have found that support levels crash when questions are asked about the cost that respondents are willing to bear, something absent in this one. The idea that wind and solar can meet peak power demand without massive support from gas turbines appears to have some public support. The media has to take its share of the blame. We still get reports about new wind projects, for example, which routinely contain claims that they 'will be able to power 170,000 homes.' What does that mean? That the wind farm can meet all the daily power needs of those homes 24/7 for 365 days a year? If not, what? Because if it is based on the average power use of a home divided into the output of the wind farm, it is fairly meaningless. Those 170,000 homes need to be powered continuously, especially at times of highest demand which is always when the sun isn't shining strongest — if at all — and often when the wind isn't blowing. The reports usually say the farm has a capacity of, say 250MW, but the reality is that they operate on average at below 30 per cent of that maximum output and in some parts of the year, known as wind droughts, they can produce nothing for days on end. But the effect of these repetitive claims is that many people get an unwavering belief in renewable power sources at odds with reality, which is something those considering the Liberals' net zero policy need to keep in mind. The next WA State election will be held on March 10, 2029. That's locked in. With the size of Labor's majority in Canberra, there will not be another Federal poll due until the year before. So the idea that the Liberals should come up with a new net zero carbon emissions policy in a hurry is simply ludicrous. The Liberals don't have to scrap a commitment to achieving net zero, thereby making themselves a target for another Labor scare campaign. By demonstrating the now-obvious inability of Labor's policy to hit its targets, they can argue for a more realistic timeline and a different way of getting there. Scrapping further rounds of the CIS would be a good start. And they must do a better job of convincing the public that the power bill burden householders have carried in recent years is a direct consequence of Labor's renewable energy policies. Renewables are good at producing power at times of average demand, but can't provide guaranteed supplies at affordable prices at peak hours. Those peaks just happen to coincide with the sun coming up and going down, meaning the big quantities of power from rooftop solar is not available. And if the wind isn't blowing strongly at those times, even the recourse to very expensive big battery power will not be enough to avoid system failure. That essential weakness is where the Coalition's policy focus should go. The failings of Labor's policies will be starting to bite in 2027 as coal continues to be retired, gas prices rise thanks to demand pressures, wind turbine prices continue to soar and the shortfall in new renewables capacity combine. Labor has been allowed to paint renewables as affordable and reliable, which they aren't. Anthony Albanese escaped any penalty for breaking his 2022 election promise that power prices for the average home would be $275 lower by this year. The focus on the Liberals' internal wrangling over a 2050 net zero target should not be a distraction from the fact that Labor's policy has made electricity more expensive and potentially less reliable.
West Australian
an hour ago
- West Australian
New parliament, same old props for Anthony Albanese in ascendency
Midway through Question Time on Tuesday, Anthony Albanese received a yellow messenger envelope from which he extracted a slip of green plastic. Health Minister Mark Butler had already discreetly handed his own Medicare card to the Prime Minister minutes earlier. When Mr Albanese rose next, sure enough, he brandished the Medicare card that was never far from his hand during the election campaign. He was so wedded to the bit that, on the day he called the election, a staffer had to be dispatched to the Lodge to retrieve the green and gold card that had been forgotten on the early morning drive to visit the Governor-General. The reiteration of the familiar gesture during this first sitting of Parliament spoke to the Government's determination to focus attention on its delivery of election commitments. It wants to keep talking about what it's doing and sees the Opposition as irrelevant. The attitude shows as well in how Mr Albanese is approaching interacting with new Liberal leader Sussan Ley – or, rather, not interacting with her. He ignores her in the chamber and out of it. Even letters sent to his office go unanswered, where previously Peter Dutton's missives would at least be acknowledged. The Coalition meanwhile was determined to focus on the very topics Australians have just comprehensively shown they like Labor's approach to: health and energy. It didn't carry out any sustained test of brand new ministers Sam Rae (whose aged care portfolio has plenty that needs examining) or assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino, baffling people on both sides of politics. The toughest questions came from the crossbenchers, like Kate Chaney asking why just 5 per cent of the National Reconstruction Fund had been spent, or Helen Haines wondering what was happening for the nearly 90,000 older Australians waiting an extra four months for the home-care packages they urgently need. Ms Ley and her inner circle jettisoned their planned QT strategy on the fly the day Mr Albanese produced the Medicare card to instead hammer the Prime Minister on the cost of seeing a doctor. Despite the boosted bulk-billing incentives promised during the election not kicking in until November, they asked repeated questions about why it wasn't free now to see a doctor. Coalition frontbencher Melissa McIntosh brandished her own Medicare card along with a credit card during Monday's question time, earning her an admonishment from Speaker Milton Dick: 'The member will not use props!' Mr Albanese, too, received a light rap on the knuckles – 'I'm sure the Prime Minister will look after that card carefully and will continue with his answer' – but it didn't prevent his gleeful grandstanding. He delivered a lesson in the old adage of campaigning in poetry and governing in prose – and fine print. How many Australians today were using their credit card to see the GP? 'Too many is the answer, which is why we want 90 per cent by 2030 to just use this little card here, this piece of green and gold plastic,' Mr Albanese said. Energy Minister Chris Bowen could barely contain his enthusiasm at being given multiple opportunities to point out the Coalition's ongoing rift over net zero and climate policy. After the WA Liberals' State council used the weekend between the sitting weeks to call on the party to dump net zero, Mr Bowen linked Andrew Hastie's leadership ambitions with his enthusiastic support for the moves and hit job on local leader Basil Zempilas. 'The West Australian Liberal Party state council voted against net zero, the Leader of the Opposition in WA came out and disassociated himself from that which earned him an attack from the member for Canning,' Mr Bowen told Parliament. 'The member for Canning will undermine any leader of the opposition that he can find. He's taking a practice run in Perth for what he intends to do in Canberra, sometime in the next 12 months as we all know.' Ali France, who won Dickson from Mr Dutton, asked the first and last questions of the fortnight. 'How has the Albanese Labor Government been pursuing its agenda this fortnight? And how does this compare to other approaches in Parliament?' she inquired on Thursday. 'The Opposition have certainly been pursuing their own agenda – or, should I say, agendas, because there's more than one over there: fighting publicly over whether climate change is real and over whether they support net zero,' Mr Albanese said, continuing with a jibe about 'a split screen showing a split party'. The Prime Minister cautioned his caucus colleagues this week against hubris, telling them Labor had to maintain its humility and sense of service and purpose to keep in voters' good books. That hasn't stopped him and his trusty Leader of the House Tony Burke from rubbing their opponents' noses in the new way of doing things. This is compounded by the depth of the Government's frontbench and ranks of rising talent, in contrast to a decimated and divided Coalition. It's like a grand final team running on against an under-14s side, one longtime political observer put it. From slashing staff to slashing questions and committee leadership positions, they're taking advantage of Labor's numbers in both chambers and control of the ways of Parliament to hinder the Opposition's work in ways that will barely register with the public at large. Take the last-minute stunt on Thursday afternoon, where Labor did a switcheroo on the private members' business for Parliament's return at the end of this month, coming good on a threat to allow Nationals renegade Barnaby Joyce all the time in the world to debate his legislation to repeal net zero. Labor also backed the Greens to set up an examination of 'information integrity on climate change and energy', which might have escaped notice had the Greens not belled the cat on it being an inquiry into conservative campaign outfit Advance. The broad sense from Liberals willing to give her a chance is that Ms Ley's first parliamentary test went OK. She didn't make a splash, but she is giving voters a reason to look again at the party. The fights over net zero and soul-searching about the party's membership and women should have happened three years ago, Liberals from both sides of the party's broad church say. It might be leading to some pain now, but better now than on the eve of an election. Same goes for contributions like that of Longman MP Terry Young, who told Parliament the 'ridiculous practice' of quotas caused more problems than they solved. 'Men tend to be more drawn to vocations that involve maths and physical exertion like construction and trades, whereas women in the main tend to be drawn to careers that involve women and care and other people,' he said. The response from most Liberals asked about it was to put their head in their hands. It was a particularly stark contrast after a week of first speeches from Labor's two dozen new MPs, most of them women and many from diverse backgrounds. They told varied and often emotional stories of what had brought them to Parliament. But the one uniting strand throughout the speeches was their genuinely heartfelt thanks to Mr Albanese — far more so than is typical. Again and again the new MPs thanked him for believing in them when no one else did, for campaigning in their seat despite many writing it off, for asking them to run in the first place. 'Advice given to us when preparing our first speech was that it wouldn't be a bad career move to put in a 'thank you' to the Prime Minister,' Rowan Holzberger, who won the Queensland seat of Forde, said. 'Of course, I want to thank him for his performance during the campaign … But I really want to thank him for being like a big brother.' Once the excitement of the new dynamics of Parliament wears off and the Prime Minister falls back into old habits, there is potential for his bulging 123-member caucus to grow restless and unruly. The deep and personal loyalty to a leader on display during these speeches shows Mr Albanese will have as firm a grip on his party room as he does his Medicare card.
West Australian
7 hours ago
- West Australian
Mobile TAFE, energy projects: Anthony Albanese commits to ‘tangible' change for Indigenous communities
Mobile TAFEs will teach Indigenous people skills where they live while new Government funding will help native title holders land better deals and faster approvals for their projects, Anthony Albanese will pledge as he decries culture wars and the politics of division. The Prime Minister will use a speech at the 25th anniversary Garma Festival on Saturday to recommit to 'tangible, meaningful change in remote communities' and extend his promises of a focus on delivery to Indigenous people. 'Delivery is about repaying trust – and building it,' he will say, according to a draft version of his speech. 'Pushing back against those who only ever talk in terms of cost or waste or problems without solutions, those who choose the cheap politics of division over the patient work of lasting change, or who seek to turn the grace and generosity of a Welcome to Country into a political weapon. 'Culture wars are a dry gully. They offer us nothing, they lead us nowhere.' Closing the gap data released this past week showed things are getting worse, with just four of the 19 targets to reduce Indigenous disadvantage now on track and many others slipping back. Mr Albanese will say the challenges underscored by this report card are hardly new or unknown, and he wants to end the days of 'seeking new ways to describe old difficulties' or trying to manage expectations. 'Let me make this crystal clear: reports and reviews have their place – but they are not a substitute for results,' he will say. At Garma last year, in the wake of the Voice referendum loss, Mr Albanese said the Government's focus would be working with Indigenous people on economic development. On Saturday, he will announce the Coalition of Paks and the Government have established a First Nations Economic Empowerment Alliance that will work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to boost skills and education, back businesses and create jobs. $75 million will help native title holders negotiate better deals and advocate for infrastructure and housing projects on their land, while a further $70 million will be unlocked to get First Nations clean energy projects up and running. A new $31 million Mobile TAFE model will take teachers into remote communities to train the next generations of mechanics, plumbers and workers for Aboriginal-controlled community sector organisations. 'Instead of people having to move away from home to prepare for a career in mining or agriculture, construction or the care economy, we will bring skills and jobs to communities,' Mr Albanese said. 'Hands-on training, on country. This is all about tangible, meaningful change in remote communities.'
