{"id":321210,"date":"2022-07-12T15:45:51","date_gmt":"2022-07-12T05:45:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/?p=321210"},"modified":"2022-07-13T00:38:21","modified_gmt":"2022-07-12T14:38:21","slug":"the-questions-no-one-asked","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/2022\/07\/12\/the-questions-no-one-asked\/","title":{"rendered":"The Questions No One Asked"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-77900\" src=\"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/editorial-d.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"210\" height=\"350\" srcset=\"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/editorial-d.jpg 210w, https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/editorial-d-180x300.jpg 180w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 210px) 100vw, 210px\" \/><strong>July 12, 2022<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong>by Dafyd Martindale<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The South Burnett Regional Council&#8217;s 2022-23 Budget &#8211; handed down last Friday &#8211; was unusual in a couple of ways.<\/p>\n<p>One of them was that Mayor Brett Otto voted against his own Budget for the second year running (joined this year by Cr Kathy Duff and Cr Jane Erkens).<\/p>\n<p><strong>The other was that it contained a plan to increase water access and sewerage charges by 6 per cent and 3 per cent a year for the coming decade, with the aim of building an $80 million war chest to replace the South Burnett&#8217;s ageing water and sewerage systems.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The three dissenting Councillors &#8211; Otto, Duff and Erkens &#8211; said the reason they were voting against the Budget was because it proposed to use $1.5 million of remaining Works For Queensland grant money to build a bigger water storage system on Mt Wooroolin.<\/p>\n<p>Mayor Otto argued this money should come out of the water infrastructure budget instead.<\/p>\n<p>This would allow the Council to spend $1.5 million on a range of small community projects including:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Nine car park shelters for cabins at BP Dam<\/li>\n<li>A camping ground at Durong<\/li>\n<li>An upgrade to Kumbia&#8217;s Apex Park<\/li>\n<li>A weaner sculpture display at Proston<\/li>\n<li>Upgrades to the Proston lookout<\/li>\n<li>Upgrades to Tipperary Flat Park in Nanango<\/li>\n<li>Completion of Lions Park in Kingaroy<\/li>\n<li>A basketball half-court in Murgon<\/li>\n<li>Fixes to street drainage issues at Tingoora<\/li>\n<li>Sealing of McKell Park&#8217;s car park in Wondai<\/li>\n<li>Shade structures in Wondai&#8217;s Coronation Park, and<\/li>\n<li>Stage 2 upgrades to Murgon&#8217;s QEII Park<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Against this, the remaining four Councillors argued Kingaroy&#8217;s water needs were steadily becoming more acute and while the projects listed were all worthwhile, other ways to fund them could be found in the coming year.<\/p>\n<p>They underlined that in any battle between &#8220;wants&#8221; and &#8220;needs&#8221;, the &#8220;needs&#8221; of residents must be more important.<\/p>\n<p>And this argument prevailed on the day.<\/p>\n<p>(We would point out, too, that roughly half these projects will benefit tourists much more than local residents).<\/p>\n<p>However, another argument that didn&#8217;t see the light of day in any of this debate was (get your dictionary out) intergenerational equity (IE).<\/p>\n<p>IE applies to a lot of government spending and it&#8217;s based on a very simple idea:<\/p>\n<p><strong>When a Council builds long-lived assets, is it fair the ratepayers of today should pay the entire cost of something that will serve the needs of several generations of ratepayers to come?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Is it fair that all of us should see our water access and sewerage charges increase by 60 per cent over the next decade so our Council can replace our region&#8217;s 70-year-old water and sewerage systems?<\/p>\n<p>Systems that will then be enjoyed &#8211; largely free, except for routine running and maintenance costs &#8211; by future ratepayers for the next 60 to 70 years after they&#8217;re built and paid for?<\/p>\n<p>Most people would say no, that&#8217;s not very fair at all.<\/p>\n<p>So the usual way governments ensure IE occurs is to borrow money and then repay it over the lifetime of the long-lived asset, or at least a big slice of it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Right now the South Burnett Regional Council is carrying about $30 million in borrowings, which it is repaying at an average of $3 million a year.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Most of this money was borrowed to build long-lived assets such as Kingaroy&#8217;s new waste water treatment plant or upgrades to the Gordonbrook Dam water treatment plant.<\/p>\n<p>Both of these were built six to eight years ago by previous Mayors who paid heed to IE and acted accordingly.<\/p>\n<p>But this latest Council don&#8217;t seem to have looked at this option, or if they have, they&#8217;ve kept very quiet about it.<\/p>\n<p><strong>So we&#8217;d like to ask why they haven&#8217;t looked at borrowing or if they did, why did they rule it out?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>And a second question we&#8217;d like to ask is this:<\/p>\n<p>If Council is going to raise our water access and sewerage charges by 60 per cent between now and 2032 to fund an $80 million war chest, what are they going to do when the extra money is spent and the job is done?<\/p>\n<p>Slash our charges? Give us all a big rebate?<\/p>\n<p>Or quietly put the extra revenue into their budgets and hope we&#8217;ve all forgotten we paid $80 million to give future ratepayers a free ride?<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/southburnett.com.au\/news2\/editorial\/\">Read more Editorial columns<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The South Burnett Regional Council&#8217;s 2022-23 Budget &#8211; handed down last Friday &#8211; was unusual in a couple of ways.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":259995,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,598,3],"tags":[1131],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v19.11 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Questions No One Asked - southburnett.com.au<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The South Burnett Regional Council&#039;s 2022-23 Budget - handed down last Friday - 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