Roy’s round-up: A mood of cautious optimism

By Member for Barwon, Roy Butler

Despite the troubles overseas and recent devastating floods, more generally there is a mood of cautious optimism.

We seem to have passed the peak of the latest wave of the pandemic, there is still a bit of rain about, which has meant flooding in some areas, but also means plenty of soil moisture for agriculture in regional NSW, with rivers and storages looking good. There are signs of recovery around. While we will always be faced with problems, we have the potential to enter a golden era.
Regional revival

I recently delivered a private member’s statement in parliament talking about the promising prospects for regional Australia. I said that we have come through a hellish period of drought, fire, flood, COVID-19 and a mouse plague, and though it looked like we would never see good times again, now, with a bit of revitalising rain and a receding pandemic, we finally have an opportunity to capitalise on the good times.

Yet it will only happen if the government does a bit of homework. They need to work on issues such as – improving health services and education; providing an environment for job opportunities to grow, partly by abolishing payroll tax; offering incentives for public servants to move to regional areas; protecting water resources by properly regulating takes from our watercourses; spending a bit of money on advertising in rural newspapers; and improving mobile and internet connectivity.

It was not an exhaustive list, there are plenty of other things that can be done to help with a rural revival, but it gave an outline of the tasks ahead and what can be done to make
regional NSW an even better place to live. I believe we could be on the cusp of an amazing period for regional NSW.

Councils

Another issue I raised in parliament during the last sitting was councils being faced with a huge financial burden.

The councils in Barwon don’t have the rate paying base of big city councils, nor can they raise millions charging for services, or through things like parking charges and development application fees.

Yet, they have to provide services, roads and facilities to much larger areas, many of which have a duplication of those services, roads and facilities because of their large geographic spread.

This leaves them reliant on government funding for essential projects, but after they receive funding they are often left with an asset that requires increasing amounts of money for its upkeep.

As an asset deteriorates it costs more money to look after, causing something known as an infrastructure backlog, the lag between how much it costs to look after an asset and a council’s ability to cover that cost.

That lag averages $52 million in regional councils, but only $28.7 in metropolitan councils. In my private member’s statement I talked about some solutions for this problem, such as changing accounting rules so that councils don’t have to be weighed down by the depreciation.