Thursday, 15 May 2025

Adjournment

Hindmarsh Shire Council community assets

Emma KEALY (Lowan) (01:37): (1141) My adjournment matter is to the Treasurer, and the action I seek is for the Treasurer to approach the Hindmarsh Shire Council to ensure that there is a purchase of their SES buildings and land at Nhill and Dimboola, which are owned by Hindmarsh Shire Council. Hindmarsh Shire Council has an extraordinarily low rate base. Their rate base is around $8 million a year, and they have a vast number of community assets that are run by the council, particularly their road network. It is an extensive road network and they do an incredible job managing as many hundreds of kilometres as they do, but it is a huge burden on that council when they get very little support from the state government for those projects and for infrastructure projects like Nhill’s Davis Park. Now they are also facing paying a huge amount under the just-passed emergency services volunteers tax. How is it fair that a tax will take about $5 million from the Hindmarsh Shire Council area, where they have got a rate revenue of just $8 million, and you are slugging the council and taking away that council’s opportunity to invest in that local road network, their pool assets and the other council assets?

Of course Hindmarsh is not the only council in this situation. We also have a situation in Horsham, where similarly they own land which houses the Horsham SES. There are many councils across the state that are in a similar situation, where there are state government buildings which are utilised by services operated by the state government but on land that is owned by a council that is looking at paying a huge increase on the Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund. I am asking therefore for the Treasurer to take action to acquire these buildings. These are buildings that are certainly no longer required to be owned by councils. It is something that is going to be an escalating and ongoing cost for those councils into the future. It is something that therefore will take more and more money out of those small local communities and local economies, which do such an amazing job; they employ so many people. We have got great initiatives happening out in that Hindmarsh region. I would like to acknowledge the great work of Chan and the team who are behind the Wimmera Steampunk Festival – an amazing festival in Dimboola which, honestly, is becoming an iconic event for all of Victoria. We need to make sure our councils are supported, so I put that to the Treasurer: please purchase and acquire these lands.