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And what will they actually do?
Govt to unveil $300m infrastructure plan (part of the overall economic stimulus package)
Mr Albanese said it was important that the money be spent this financial year.
“This has to be stamped into this current financial year,” he said.
“The government’s made an assessment that this is a realistic figure which can be spent and achieve very positive outcomes as well.”
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I presume it has to be spent on infrastructure so a reduction in rates is off the cards. Likewise here in WA most councils and Shires have just been paid their rates so too late anyway.
From the Federal Govts point of view they are after the largest multiplier effect they can get. I’d be focussed on something that is labour intensive which isn’t much these days. From the actual local govt’s point of view I’d be picking something that you know an ALP minister would really like and can indeed be spent in a year.
Childcare.
Modifying pedestrian infrastructure to make it quicker to get to public transport, particularly train stations.
Build some sorely needed bike paths such as the East West rail trail. There are too many cars belching greenhouse gases, the roads are clogged with commuters and cars dropping kids off to school.
Most people are too scared to ride a bike on such busy roads, including quite a few back streets.
Suburban storm water capture tanks would also be great – Boroondara Council spends $1m per year trucking recycled water to tanks to water parks and ovals.
Getting Councils to go carbon neutral would also be an excellent use – including moving to more efficient street lighting and energy usage in buildings and infrastructure.
Oh yeah, that’s right thanks Peter.
Fluoro/LED street lights.
PeterC: that’s indeed a major gap in Melbourne’s bike trail network.
Robert, do you have estimates on what percentage of people that would actually help? What’s an example of a train station that takes a long time to get to because of inadequate pedestrian infrastructure? I mean…a footpath down the middle of the Eastern freeway might make it quicker for me to walk from where I live (Doncaster East) to, say, Clifton Hill station, but I assume that’s not what you have in mind…
Build the new library they’ve been promising for years.
Campbell Newman might put it towards one of his tunnels. Or the $200 million needed to stop City Hall falling down.
But given the size of the allocation, I’m assuming this isn’t for Brisbane City Council? The whole amount wouldn’t go too far towards some of the infrastructure projects under way or mooted here.
If Melbourne City council’s included, then dedicated bike paths (not mickey mouse painted ones) to allow people to ride in all directions across the CBD. I can get to the CBD fairly well, but after that I feel I should be writing my will.
wiz: see this post, and the comment about South Yarra station.
Rudd’s money? Nice of him to chip in out of his own pocket.
To the question, I would like to see counciils use the money to cut rates. I’m sick of paying for the sub-standard chimps on my local council to go on ‘fact-finding missions’ and visits to our ‘twin city’. And I object to local government acting as though it has a role in climate change policy. Local councils all over the place are pledging to go ‘carbon neutral’, as though the actions of some piss-ant local mayor and his cronies is going to make a blind bit of difference. And then they slug the rate payer for their silly propoganda efforts.
If they don’t cut rates, then given the ABC Childcare situation, there would probably be a benefit in expanding council-run childcare services. If the councils could buy up (or lease) the ABC centres and run them that would probably give a degree of confidence to people who are currently unsure about wht is going to happen to their childcare when the federal government’s assistance runs out in December. Obviously a long-term solution is going to require the action of a real government (i.e. state or federal), but the good-for-nothings taking up space in town halls could play a role in the interim.
The numbnuts in our local council (shared with Paul Burns) will most likely burn 3 million dollars taking some pathetic disagreement to the high court. It’s the only thing they’re capable of (other than the systemic and organised corruption that occurs when the owner of the local building supplies yard is the Mayor).
It beggars belief that the council rates in a place like Armidale are double what they are in Cherrybrook in Sydney, but they are. Where does the money go? Lawsuits and infighting.
Asking these idiots to use the money sensibly is like asking schoolkids to spend $5 they found on the ground on something other than lollies. Voting in the local council election is like taking every grade-A idiot in the district and being forced to them them an attaboy. It’d be easier to go down on voting day and ask the scrutineers to kick you in the nuts.
Please, please, please, do not give these people any more money.
I don’t know if anyone else saw the mayor of Emerald (I think) on the 7 30 Report last night – as president of the national version of the LGA. He mentioned something about federal government inaction and said his council had brought free to air tv to Emerald – whatever could that mean? I was puzzled. Did they not have tv in Emerald?
Just wondering…
Shouldn’t local councils be paying for their own bike paths, libaries, pedestrian overpasses and child care centres instead of rumbling off to Canberra with the rattling tin?
Parliament House is starting to look like Downtown L.A. with the number of people wandering around it with a paper cup in their hand seeking change from the Federal Government.
Bury power lines
Kim,
Anything except a tunnel…
Canberra raises income tax, local councils don’t – they rely on rates. Personally, I would be happy to see some of my income tax dollars spent on local services and infrastructure that benefit the community. There is obviously a shortage of funding for this – or they wouldn’t be offering the money.
Robert, thanks for that link, although as someone whose closest train station is about 90 minutes walk away (despite living less than 20 minute’s drive from the city*) it’s hard to get too excited about measures that will slightly reduce walking times from those unfortunate enough to live a whole 11 minutes’ walk from a train station.
* …on Sunday morning at 2AM. Last Friday evening I drove my wife into the city. It took 15 minutes to get to the intersection of Hoddle St & Victoria Pde. The remainder of the journey, to just near the Rialto Bldg, took over 20 minutes. Hopefully next time I can convince her it would be better for all concerned to drop her off at a train station, but the reality is that she would still prefer to sit in gridlocked traffic in the comfort and safety of our car than travel alone on a train, and then have to find her way from the station to her destination by foot (especially in heels).
Nothing radical.
Local councils shouldn’t be macro-change agents. I could argue they shouldn’t exist, period. If any level of government should merely administrate, then it should be local government. Pick up the bins, run the library and child care, make sure the trees outside my house don’t uproot my foundations with their roots, and so on and so forth.
Living in the City of Port Phillip, we see plenty of people running who want to change the world one municipality at a time. This is a waste, especially when local councillors, as a group, don’t fill me full of confidence.
“Campbell Newman might put it towards one of his tunnels. Or the $200 million needed to stop City Hall falling down.”
Isn’t the City Hall sinking?
Maybe money could be spent quickly on a fact finding mission, for councillors, to Venice then Holland and a swing through the south sea islands on the way back.
There’s a park over the road from my house. It backs onto the river and would be perfect for pony rides on Sunday mornings.
Oh, I’d also like a footpath. We are 400 metres from the town centre and the house is 130 years old. Surely enough rates have been paid to get a footpath?
$300 million would go a long way in supplying household reverse osmosis water filtering to every home to combat the germs which infect our water pipes where state and the councils can only try to flush them out by using chlorine to kill them.
$300 million on long-term infrastructure spending
$10 billion on short-term cash handouts.
It’s good that there trying to stimulate the economy given the current economic downturn, but is this really a sensible balance of long and short-term objectives?
Peterc
No disagreement about the merits of income tax receipts being paid on local services and infrastructure. The question is more one of whether local councils make the best decisions about how to spend money from sources other than their own tax receipts (rates are a tax).
And coming from Brisbane, I will wonder out loud whether the problem in some parts of Australia is too many councils, and a lack of either personnel skills or critical mass to make the investments that matter.
I wouldn’t take councils coming to Canberra for money as prima facie evidence that they lack the capacity to raise revenues. It may also be how current income is being used. That said, there are clearly issues for LGAs in lower income areas, where the need for services exceeds the revenue available. But my memory from living in Sydney was that the councils experiencing the most problems were not necessarily those in the lower income areas.
BTW, are local councils even responsible for bus shelters, pedestrian crossings or bike lanes along major roads? Because there’s a definite need for all three around here…
Mark, re free to air TV = I’m just guessing but would he mean SBS?
I suspect the City of Sydney would like to build a light rail system throughout the CBD – the question is whether they’ll reclaim footpaths or traffic lanes to do this – there isn’t spare room in the CBD.
Sacha, I heard Clover Moore on the radio this morning talking about using the City of Sydney’s share of the $300m to invest in extending the light rail “network” in a circuit of Sydney down through Chinatown and around the Barangaroo/Hungry Mile area. (I think that’d be an insane and immoral waste of money, but that’s just my opinion).
It was only when she also said that she’d use the Council’s share to address global warming and the financial crisis that the interviewer pointed out that the money has to go around every LGA in Australia.
Here’s the City of Sydney’s wish list for infrastructure: http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/Development/documents/UrbanRenewals/Australias-Future-Infrastructure-Requirements.pdf
and it includes light rail in the CBD.
I would like to see the Rockingham mayor start to clean up areas that Tourists don’t see, like mowing council verges & trimming trees away from power lines. Then there are the road black spots, install traffic lights with arrows. There is so much that requires council action, it’s time to act without waiting for continued complaints like cracked foot-paths.Why wait for people to fall? Where is the community hall in Rockingham, Kwinana and other areas put our council to shame.
Terry, I wonder if the problem across Australia is State governments sitting between local and federal government. Local government knows what is needed in their area. State governments are prone to pork-barelling in marginal seats, ignoring safe seats, and generally allocating infrastructure and funding based on politics rather than need.
Just look at Victoria’s desalination plant and North South pipeline – the Brumby Governemnt has politically written off constituencies in the Yea/Goulburn and Wonthaggi/Gippsland regions because they know will be kicked out when Melbournian’s realise the entire city is on track to run out of water.
And Tim Holding, the Water Minister, keeps saying water tanks are no good – despite many (including our household) getting 95%+ of their water from them.
And Tim Holding and Brumbystill allow logging in our water catchments.
Local Council’s are not so stupid, and would be more accountable to the electorate.
I don’t think we need the states any more – they exist due to adminstrative limits that existed prior to the advent of modern communications and transport. They are of course protected in the Constitution. But they are “piggies in the middle”.
Just look at the complete SNAFU regarding Murray Darling river and catchment management, and the Snowy river management too.
In Byron Shire:
Kerbs and footpaths would be nice, as would a decent library, some bike paths, and a solution to BB’s insane holiday traffic.
I would like to see Clover’s light rail system go ahead – anything to have less traffic in the CBD, frankly – but I doubt she’ll get money for it from the local government allocation, since they’re asking for about $90million for the whole project. I believe City of Sydney Council has also applied to the main Infrastructure Australia funding allocation for the two light rail systems plus the bike network, so that’s where the money will come from if the feds are interested in it. As I understand it, the idea with the light rail is to use them to replace buses (which are noisy, slow, polluting and clog the roads), so some of the space needed would come from reducing the number of bus lanes. The CBD streets are so narrow that I find it hard to see that helping, especially since Clover wants to add in more dedicated bike lanes as well, but presumably someone has been paid a lot of money to come up with the idea so I guess there must be some way to do it.
My own council, Blue Mountains, will probably spend the cash on the Cultural Centre/Woolworths (…yeah) that they’ve been planning for the last umpteen years. I’d like to see them fix up Kingsford Smith Park in Katoomba, which is completely unmaintained, overgrown and populated by junkies, but I’m not sure if that’s inspiring enough for Kevin to pay for.
One other thing – there was some talk about trying for constitutional recognition of local government, so this is as good a time as any to ask why the 1988ish referendum for the exact same thing was rejected. I wasn’t alive at the time so I have no idea why something so basic would be knocked back.
This, from Public Opinion:
http://www.sauer-thompson.com/archives/opinion/2008/11/borrowing-our-w.php#more
makes sense to me.
“Using the global economic crisis to provide a stimulus to tackle climate change is not on their radar. They — and the Rudd Government — are talking in terms of roads, swimming pools, parks, community centres —not recycling storm water, solar power, or connecting wind power to the national grid, energy efficiency, modern sewerage treatment plants. So the rhetoric of “decisive action”, “being ahead of the curve” , and “acting decisively” with respect to climate change is political spin.”
Peterc, getting rid of state government is long overdue, and there was speculation that this is the first tiny step in that direction.
As my local council is dominated by Greens, I am quite confident that the kind of proposals they are likely to support would be a step in the right direction.
Light rail in Sydney CBD is a great idea IF it is combined with cycle lanes and increased pedestrian access. It’s often quicker to walk from Wynyard to Central (say) than to catch a bus, but you end up walking in overcrowded streets.
Whoa whoa there folks. There are 500 mayors in Canberra. NSW alone has four grades of local government from big to tiny. All of them wanting their share of $300 million won’t leave much for any of them to have too big ideas of what to immediately spend it on. Don’t be surprised if the local council chambers or street furniture gets a paint job or something similar and visible to keep the punters happy. I am curious what formula they will use to equitably dispense such largesse. And you can probably bet a few won’t be able to agree on what to spend it on in time.
Light rail in the Sydney CBD would have a problem if it’s not mostly separated from the road system – ideally the transport networks work in parallel so delays in one don’t result in delays in the others.
I agree that it would be nice to get rid of the buses from the city – traffic in the CBD has been noticeably better when there’s a bus strike. But to do this you need places where the buses will terminate near the CBD edge and a way to move people to where the buses will pick them up. It should be noted that bus lanes aren’t necessarily only for the exclusive use of buses.
” I am curious what formula they will use to equitably dispense such largesse. And you can probably bet a few won’t be able to agree on what to spend it on in time.”
.
Good question Pablo – I’d guess it goes like this ( and remember I’m thinking of the mechanism from a NSW perspective )- Labor council good = gets money ,
Others in charge of Council= losers and scum so they get the finger.
.
It is a tried and true method here in NSW and with Albanese in charge I’m sure the grudge factor has to be involved.
Apparently this Govt has already cut a lot of funding that was going to councils earlier this year ( remember when inflation was a monster and Howard/Costello had damaged the economy with profligate spending in regional areas? )so maybe they will use the money to complete half finished projects .
Listening in on NewsRadio, it sounds like all councils waled away with at least $100K, and the bigger ones didn’t get most of the things on their wish lists. So it sounds like paving footpaths and repainting the grandstand at the football ground in most cases.
So if Clover Moore was going to use her allocation to “solve global warming” – presumably with an “Earth Summt” of some sort – I suspect she has to go to a different bucket of $ to the one Albanese was holding out for 500 mayors today.
People may wish to comment on the impact of local governments setting targets for reductions in local carbon emissions, as the City of Sydney does in the adopted Sydney 2030 plan (see http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/2030/documents/strategy/02_ENVIRONMENTAL_PERFORMER.pdf – warning ~5MB).
It’s not at all clear why a target for global carbon emissions of, say, 70% from 1990 by 2050 levels requires each local government to also have the same target as what matters is the total level of global emissions. It is likely that it would be more efficient for each local government to not attempt to meet some emissions reduction target in their area. Of course, this is the same reason you want to have international linkages in the global emissions reduction regime.
It’s pretty unbelievable that the City of Sydney actually adopted its own emissions reduction target.
Build an electric chair for droppers who ignore No Junk Mail stickers.
Our mob would probably build another f*cking marina nobody wants. I wouldn’t give them two bob.
Getting rid of State Governments seems to be popular at this time. II would like to know who would run and be responsible for:- Hospitals, police, schools, child protection, local courts, roads and transport, etc. I cannot see councils filling these roles.
Maybe we should look at why the Constitution was created the way it is. I see the problem as the Federal Governemnt entering fields that rightly belong to the States. This rot stsrted after the States relinguish their right to raise personal taxation as a war measure.
The result the States are responsible for providng services, which they were created for. They no longer responsible for raising the bulk of the money.
The states should be given back the power of raising the taxes need to provide the basic services they are responsible for.
The Federal government should stick to what they were created for. That is:- Defence, foreign affairs, immigration and matters, affect the whole country.
I see no reason for local government to be ackowledge in the Constitution.
The present tax enquiry should start their review by first looking who should raise tax.
Mark, re: Emerald local council and TV, it seems that none of the digital television conversion plans took locally owned analog retransmission sites into account (since they were neither owned nor run by the ABC or any of the commercial channels). Emerald was probably eligible for satellite delivery of TV as are most bits of Australia that can’t receive terrestrial TV transmission (not unusual in Australia).
So – it’s a silly bit of grandstanding by the local council who just robbed their constituents of subsidised access to satellite delivery of TV. I’m sure somebody thought it was a good idea.
There isn’t much on the web about it, although this details a bit of their federal submission.
It’s basically why a lot of people hold their local councils in contempt – so prone to being co-opted by idiots with strange agendas.
Thanks, David.
On the Gold Coast I think the money would be well spent on a witch hunt.
On the Gold Coast I think the money would be well spent on demolition.
I would guess that in many cases the money will be used for:
1. Paying bribes to property developers (hard hit by the collapse of the housing bubble etc) or,
2. Facilitating meetings in fancy places so that property developers can pay the councilors bribes.
Just on the dodginess factor, the story on the 7 30 report last night made me think they’d picked the weirdest looking and broadest accented of our nation’s fine crop of mayors for interviews!
Mark – I’m pretty sure I know the type. Correct me if I’m wrong but if they were American (and not from one of the coasts) they’d probably be wearing cowboy boots and trying to sound as folksy as possible?
Local Councils could also use some of the money take local action on reducing their carbon emissions and other means of tackling climate change.
Since the Rudd Government still has Australia on a trajectory to increase emissions at least until 2015, probably longer – “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” not withstanding.