Victorian Farmers Federation calls for members to send in rates notices to help lobby for reform

Federation president David Jochinke said the initiative aimed to collect data from farmers to lobby the state government.

“It’s about two things: we want a better model for funding local governments and we think that farmers are being asked to pay an unfair amount,” he said.

Mr Jochinke asked farmers to send in their rates notice data during the federation’s Wimmera branch meeting in Horsham last week.

Though overall rates rises have been capped at 3.5 per cent for most councils in Victoria, individual notices can still vary above or below the cap.

Rates are calculated as a percentage of capital improved value of a property.

If a valuer judges a property to have substantially increased in market value over two years, the owner might receive a rates bill with a double figure percentage increase.

Mr Johincke said farmers across the Wimmera and Victoria had come to the federation with rates notices that had increased by six to 12 per cent from last year.

“There’s a feeling that farmers have been asked to take on an unfair proportion of rates increases, that it’s uneven across the board,” he said.

“Farmers have got to find the money to pay for these increases as they’ve had not one but two poor seasons.

“Just when things should be getting better with the weather and the rates cap, they get the compounded effect of these higher bills.”

Last month, McKenzie Creek farmer Neville McIntyre said he would appeal his land valuation after a 55 per cent increase in his Horsham Rural City Council rates.

Horsham council gives a discount to most farm properties through differential rates.

Horsham council chief executive Peter Brown said he welcomed any initiative to collect data on councils. 

“I think it’s good. I don’t have any issues when people collect data,” he said.

“I think it’s important that we collect as much data about this as we can.

“We will be publishing data on valuations at some point but I don’t think we’re ready to do that.”

Mr Brown said he was concerned that the government would only hear from some farmers.

“The only issue is that people will send data in when they have got bad outcomes, but not necessarily when they have good outcomes,” he said.

“There will be balancing situations: where notices go up by greater than 3.5 per cent there must be lots of cases where people’s notices have gone up by less than 3.5 per cent.

“There needs to be some care taken with the method of data collection.”

Mr Brown said it was important that people recognise that the state government rates cap was a separate issue to the distribution of property values.

Mr Jochinke and Mr Brown both said any investigation into new ways to support councils would be welcomed.

“Councils across Victoria have been progressively reducing their rates increase for a number of years,” Mr Brown said.

“The issue for rural councils was that the only way of staying afloat was to increase rates. There needs to be a major review of how councils are funded in Victoria, particularly in regional areas.”