Economic and Finance Committee: Inquiry into Local Government Rate Capping Policies

Mr ODENWALDER (Little Para) (11:17): I move:

That the 91^st report of the committee, entitled Inquiry into Local Government Rate Capping Policies, be noted.

In May 2015, the Economic and Finance Committee commenced an inquiry into local government rate capping policies. The final report of this inquiry was tabled on 6 July this year, and I hope that members have had a chance to peruse that fine report. On behalf of the members of the committee, I would like to express my gratitude to all of those people who either provided a written submission to the inquiry or appeared before the inquiry to present oral evidence.

The inquiry received a total of 21 written submissions. In addition to those submissions, we also held a total of five public hearings, during which we heard testimony from 23 persons representing 12 different organisations, principal among these being local councils and their main representative body, the Local Government Association. I believe we heard from a good representative slice of South Australian local government. We heard from inner metropolitan councils, outer metropolitan councils and rural and remote councils.

Each council, of course, has their own demographic profile and must address those issues unique to their particular constituency, but one thing they almost without exception appear to agree on is their opposition to the introduction of a rate cap. Many arguments were presented in support of this position, but one commonly expressed argument was that having one tier of government impose rate capping provisions on another tier was a direct attack on democracy itself.

One of the inquiry's terms of reference concerned the operation of rate capping elsewhere in Australia. The Victorian government has imposed a rate cap on their local government sector, beginning this month. As part of their scheme, they have tasked their environment and planning committee with monitoring its performance and reporting every six months. In June this year (in other words, before the policy actually came into force) they recommended significant changes, in particular the mechanism by which councils can apply for exemptions to the cap.

In their report, they stated their belief that councils with a reasonable case should not be prevented from seeking an increase above the cap simply because the relevant government agency has a costly and overly onerous administrative regime. Rate pegging, as it is called there, has been a longstanding policy for 40 plus years in New South Wales.

Mr Knoll: I think they call it 'rate pegging'.

Mr ODENWALDER: Rate pegging—that's what I said.

Mr Knoll: I thought you said 'capping'.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Excuse me, no interjections.

Mr ODENWALDER: As I said, rate pegging, as it is called in New South Wales, has been a longstanding policy for more than 40 years. In 2013, the New South Wales government held a major inquiry into local government reform. The chair of that inquiry, Professor Graham Sansom, appeared before the present inquiry. His position could best be described as one of strong opposition to rate capping (or pegging).

One consequence of the policy emphasised by multiple submissions and testimonies concerned the reluctance of councils in New South Wales to exercise the option available to them for exceeding the published peg. Professor Sansom's final report highlighted that in 2011-12 only 23 out of 152 councils applied for this relief, even though figures suggested that 83 councils would need to increase their rates and annual charges by more than 5 per cent to achieve a simple break-even result. In the last two years, a total of 54 applications were made. Of these, at least 49 were approved in full, four were improved in part, and only one was rejected.

The consequence of putting off these hard decisions is a backlog of infrastructure assets maintenance, and we heard this time and time again. It is estimated by the New South Wales Treasury and Office of Local Government to be well in excess of $7 billion in that state. As a direct consequence of the sheer weight of evidence received, the committee has, as the principal recommendation in its report, recommended that local councils retain full authority to set their own rates and that no rate cap be introduced.

One lesson well learned from the New South Wales experience is that a thorough auditing and reporting procedure is essential of any government that wishes to make informed, realistic decisions as to the future of local government. This point was made by both Professor Sansom and the Hon. Greg Crafter AO, who chaired a 2013 inquiry into local government in South Australia.

The committee agreed and has recommended that councils be subject to a thorough auditing process under the auspices of the Auditor-General, with councils required to publish the results of these audits annually. The committee has also recommended that the South Australian local government sector should engage and consult with the general community more thoroughly during the rate setting process. Finally, I would like to thank members of the committee past and present, and particularly the committee's staff, who worked so diligently on this inquiry and on the preparation of the report. I commend it to the house.

Mr KNOLL (Schubert) (11:21): I rise today to support the rate capping inquiry and this report that we have brought. I would like to highlight maybe some slightly different parts of the report than the member for Little Para has just done. This report is certainly being done in response to a Liberal Party policy that was brought forward closely before the last election and is something that we have pursued since that time in relation to wanting to cap council rates in South Australia.

I commend the member for Goyder for being the champion of this policy. As someone who has a deep understanding of local government, I think he is uniquely placed to be able to put this forward and understands almost more than the rest of us how this needs to be done. I am proud that tucked away at the back of this report, on page 50, there is a minority report co-authored by the members for Hartley and Bright and myself. I would like to thank the member for Hartley and the member for Bright, especially, for the work that they put into the minority report, which sought to actually bolster the recommendations of this report.

I would like to quote part of the evidence given to the report by the Hon. Greg Crafter AO, from his 2013 report as chair of the LGA Local Excellence Expert Panel. He says:

To make no decisions and trying to continue in the same way as today will simply set Local Government on a path of steady decline.

I think that without the recommendation outlined in the minority report, the rest of the report locks in that steady decline because it does not deal with some of the fundamental issues that we heard of. There are numerous reports out there into the financial sustainability and the workings of the local government sector, and all of them believe that reform is necessary. In the case of the Greg Crafter report and the report as it is handed out today without the minority report attached, it does not provide any real impetus to being able to improve the situation.

It is as though we all understand that there is a problem, but nobody has the guts to stand up and find a solution to fix it. Except, there is a solution to fix it, and it comes in the form of a rate capping policy. I agree with the recommendations about the increased auditing requirements, especially the increased requirements of the Auditor-General to come in and have a look. The annual reporting of that information I think is extremely important. Probity and transparency are extremely important. They are things that I think are missing from the discourse under this current government, and I am certain they would be improved under a Marshall-led Liberal government, but they do not go far enough.

To simply say that we are going to put out a couple of reports and that is going to be good enough to affect change within the local government sector is completely wrong.The reasons I believe the local government sector has some structural issues that make this policy important are as follows: firstly, they have very low voter turnout in local government elections. There is often a lack of interest in local government elections.

Often, it only takes a few hundred votes to become a councillor in local government, and this is not representative of the wider society. I have met a lot of local government people, I have met a lot of councillors, and I think they all have great intentions and they all go in and work hard, but I do not think that the relationship between local government and the public at large is strong enough to be able to provide transparency and accountability in this instance.

The second structural reason why I think local government needs a rate capping policy is that local government does not have an adversarial system like we do in this chamber here. In this chamber, you have a government and you have an opposition. You have members of the opposition who enjoy spending hours and hours reading government reports and budgets to find places where governments have wasted money. It brings me abstract and perverse joy to find examples of government waste and, hopefully, through the highlighting of those examples, such as the $60,000 that Health spent on flying, business class, four execs to the US in December 2014, once those examples are found out, there is pressure put upon the government to fix those issues.

In local government, the system does not provide for that opportunity. You have a number of councillors, you have a mayor and you have the staff of the council, but councils by and large in South Australia are supposed to be apolitical because they are represented by individuals with their own interests as opposed to having a party structure that provides for an adversarial system.

There are some limited examples of councillors taking an adversarial role, and I note councillor Alex Antic talking about a $750,000 public toilet that Adelaide City Council wants to build, which I think is a lot of money. If they want to build a toilet of that magnitude at my house and build me a new house at the same time, I think they can go ahead and do that. Except for those limited examples where individuals take it upon themselves to undertake that adversarial role, there is not a structural role within local government to fill that. Again, this is a solid reason why we need a rate capping policy.

It is all well and good to talk about increased transparency and increased audit requirements, but without some sort of measure that provides impetus—and by that I mean there is an old saying that necessity is the mother of all invention—I think that a rate capping policy would put in place a structural impediment to excessive growth in council rates. What I think it would do, and this is extremely fundamental, is change the nature of the conversation.

At the moment, the conversation in local government is often around, 'How much money do we need? Therefore, how much money do we need to jack up the council rates by in order to achieve the budget that we want to spend?' A rate cap would change the nature of that conversation into, 'This is how much money we have. Let's look at the best ways to spend it.' I am extremely proud that my party has put this policy on the table. I am extremely proud to take it to the next election, but what also needs to be part of this conversation is then ways in which the state government can help local government to lower their cost structures.

There is a whole host of things that this state Labor government has done to make it harder for local government to do their job. Whether it be rubble royalties, whether it be having to collect increased NRM levies and other burdens that the state government put onto them, or whether they are the things around dog and cat management, litter control or what we are looking at at the moment with community housing where local government has imposts put on them in relation to the transfer of Housing SA properties, there is a whole host of ways by which this state government has imposed increased costs on local government.

On this side of the house we would prefer, instead, to have a look at ways to lower the cost structure of local government. I think that putting a cap on council rates is a way to start the conversation heading in that direction. I know that those opposite do not like this policy because it highlights some of the times that they have been culprits and complicit in this. I make very specific mention, not to councillors and not to staff of a council, but to mayors within a council, the person who probably has the most influence on being able to set rates within a council.

I look at the member for Light, who is a former member of the Town of Gawler, and his time as mayor. Over the course of his time as Mayor of the Town of Gawler and at the same time as inflation ran at about 3 per cent, his increases were 6.1 per cent. I then look at the local government minister, the member for Frome, who is obviously against (I think cheekily) this policy because, again, it highlights his own hypocrisy and the fact that his council, under his time as mayor, had increases of 6.76 per cent, against an inflation average of 3.1 per cent.

The truth is that the reason the Labor Party does not like this policy is that they are addicted to spending. They like the tier of government where it is a lot easier to jack up rates in order to achieve that spending. In this place at least there is an adversarial system and they get called out on it, but in local government, because of the structures I have talked about earlier, it is much more difficult to gain traction in the public around those things.

I think this is an extremely positive idea. I do not think there is any argument that it will cause some short-term issues, but it is designed to create short-term issues because it is only through the necessity that a cap would create that we can start to talk about how to reform the local government sector, how to make the local government sector more efficient, how to make it more transparent, and how to make it deliver better services without jacking up rates through the roof, and that is exactly why we will be proud to take this policy to the next election.

With that, I commend the report in its entirety. I encourage everybody to read pages 50 to 59 and I look forward to the furthering of this debate in the public square.

Mr GRIFFITHS (Goyder) (11:31): I wish to add to the report also and acknowledge that the genesis of it comes from a motion put by the member for Unley, I believe, as a member of the committee at that stage in May 2015. The member for Unley and I liaised on the terms of reference for the report. I thought it was important that the parliament engage in the learning exercise of a review of rate capping as it exists in New South Wales, and indeed as it was proposed for Victoria and has now been introduced by legislation, and, by the insertion of the words 'any other relevant matter', allow it to be reviewed as it exists overseas. I note some references in the report to those different areas.

Can I say to you that I am rather intrigued and I want to highlight a couple of words from the Chair, the member for Little Para, when he referred to the local government industry objection being about the concern that one level of government is imposing a cost on another. Can I say to you then: why the hell, seemingly, are those words given by a government member who does not reflect upon the facts of the increases that his government proposes about NRM and solid waste levies, and the emergency services levy that some councils are responsible for also, that all of these become part of the council rates?

It is as though even though you are saying that there should not be any controls over what the maximum increase might be, you are actually contributing, by policy decisions in different portfolio areas, to what the increase has to be anyway by these additional charges. I just find that so disappointing and I find it hypocritical for those words to be in there without a really serious argument having taken place on that because they are significant impacts. The solid waste levy is $32 million over four years. That is worthy of debate.

I get rather disappointed when some of those in the local government sector say to me that they see this as the biggest threat to local government and they intend to pursue very strident efforts, over the next two years in particular, to ensure that the Liberal policy is objected to by a large section of the community. I think the NRM levy and the solid waste levy equally have an impact upon local government and its operations and they are the ones that the argument needs to be fought about to ensure that everybody knows what they are talking about.

Local government is engaging itself in a promotion campaign at the moment, talking about 4 per cent of total taxation revenue, 16 per cent from the state government and 80 per cent from the federal government. They are getting some information out there but this is part of the debate that needs to occur.

I want to refer to a few references from the report to ensure that there is some disclosure. I appreciate that 21 people put in submissions and I appreciate that 23 people spoke as part of the five public sessions that were held, but I want to highlight a couple of points. In the executive summary in the report it states that, as part of the current provision of section 123 of the Local Government Act:

Evidence was presented that communities were not engaging with this procedure about budget setting. The Committee recommends that councils should continue to consult their local communities in relation to the setting of residential rates.

I absolutely totally agree. The idea of rate capping is to put what a maximum increase is, but not to prevent any increase above that ever being sought. It is, though, reliant upon the fact that, with the rate capping policy and the legislation in the private member’s bill that I propose, where a council believes it has to go above the rate cap limit set by ESCOSA, it has to engage with the community.

I want it to be a fulsome debate. I note that the Mayor of Onkaparinga has referred to the efforts that they make, and I commend them for that, but I also note that in some council areas no feedback is received at all about the budget process. It disappoints me that some councils are not prepared to be involved in discussions with their community about cost implications. That is an absolute key area for me.

Whenever I have spoken to any local government authority or in this chamber, I have highlighted the fact that if you want to increase the cap, go to the people, engage with the people, get them to understand what the cost structure is, what you want to do with it, and why you need to go above that figure. The information then flows, the people are behind you, and as a result members of parliament are not being contacted by aggrieved citizens saying, ‘Council has done this, council has done that, they are charging too much for rates.’ My intention is to ensure that the information is out there in the communities.

I note also that the Chair again referred to Professor Graham Sansom, as part of his reference to IPART, which is the regulatory authority in New South Wales. The Chair said that, in Professor Sansom’s opinion, IPART:

…tends to look favourably upon applications for a variation in rate revenue. In his testimony, [this being Professor Sansom] he suggested that 35 out of 36 applications in recent years had been approved.

That shows that the system works well. When the community has been engaged, the community offers its support, the approving authority reflects upon that and makes a decision that is the right one. So, again, it is another matter of engagement with the community.

I want to make sure that we do this and we get it right. For example, one of the written submissions that was received came from the Local Government Association and it referred to a provision in the act where councils, they say, already have a rate capping procedure in place where it talks about:

A council must, in declaring a general rate under the section, determine whether it will fix a maximum increase in the general rate to be charged on any rateable land within its area that constitutes a principal place of residence of a principal ratepayer…

I know of councils that have done that, but it is in the high end, and primarily it is based upon where there have been significant increases in valuation, not on a consistent level but across a wide spectrum, and some councils have put in place 15 per cent. They want to prevent any increase above 15 per cent, but that only occurs in very rare cases. Rate capping legislation proposed by the Liberal Party intends to ensure that there is equity across all councils.

So how do we improve this? That is just it. I have spoken to every council that I possibly could out of the 68 and I have had seven or eight different forums on it. I have tried to ensure that they understand what the Liberal Party proposes and some councils have given me really good feedback. For example, I note in the report a submission from the District Council of the Copper Coast where they talk about wanting a cap on red tape instead of a cap on rate increases. I absolutely agree with that, and I am sure the Treasurer would want to ensure that the regulatory requirements that are in place for businesses across all sectors are minimised so that it is easy to do business too. I think local government would like to see the same thing, Treasurer.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: I believe in no taxation without representation.

Mr GRIFFITHS: Okay.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: If they get elected, they can set the—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order!

Mr GRIFFITHS: Yes, I would agree and they can, this is it, but they have to engage with the community, Treasurer. That is what we want it to be.

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis: It’s a full reflection of the budget.

Mr GRIFFITHS: But it has to go beyond that, too. The member for Schubert reflected on the relatively low turnout figure for local government elections. It is a bit over 30 per cent—

The Hon. A. Koutsantonis interjecting:

Mr GRIFFITHS: I am not. I am just reflecting upon–

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order, members!

Mr GRIFFITHS: —the contribution of others and what the reality actually is.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Do not respond to interjections. Interjections are unparliamentary, and the Treasurer is going to cease interjecting.

Mr GRIFFITHS: He's alright. This debate will continue for some time, I have no doubt about that. Every time I meet with the Local Government Association they raise this point. There are some things that we do not talk about as often as we could. I encourage every council, as I encourage every member of the community, to ensure that the decisions that have been made are the best possible ones.

I reflect upon one of the submissions provided, I think in a written form, which referred to the reference between local government and how private enterprise runs. Private enterprise has success only when they ensure they are profitable. By being profitable they need to be efficient. Local government, by virtue of the fact that it receives something like $1 billion in rate revenue per year, needs to ensure it is efficient also because then the bottom-line opportunity is represented to those who own property, those who pay rates, and that is what the focus has to be.

I am disappointed, though, with concerns about controlling the revenue side of local government, when the total focus that I have tried to have, by ensuring rate capping is in place, is on ensuring that expenditure is controlled. The basic belief that the Liberal Party and I have is the fact that efficiency of service delivery ensures that people get what they need in the widest possible spectrum. I am very strongly of the view (and I will always believe this) that no matter what form it is, any area that I have an opportunity to influence in the future, it has to ensure that it does its job as best as it can.

Local government has 700 elected members across South Australia and nearly 10,000 employees. I understand that they are absolutely dedicated, and I appreciate that they work in difficult circumstances. They are trying to provide a priority of needs across a wideranging area but they have to ensure that they have reviewed every aspect of their operations, that they are as efficient as possible and look at the opportunities that represent themselves. That could be through service delivery in other areas. It does not mean job losses, it does not mean sackings. It means efficiency, and that translates into benefits for those who own property, and they are the people we have to be concerned about.

Mr PISONI (Unley) (11:41): I just wanted to make a few comments about my experience on the committee. I was pleased to have some firsthand experience of some of the arguments, particularly through witness presentations. I was not there for the evidence of the Mayor of Unley. I would like to congratulate him on being one of the brave members of the local government community who was prepared to consider the issues and what is important to the ratepayers of Unley and to give evidence in support of rate capping in South Australia.

His evidence was considered. It was based a lot on the processes that he has been able to bring into place in the City of Unley. In recent years, we have had very low rate increases in the City of Unley. Of course, as you know, a lot of people bought homes many years ago in the City of Unley. There was a big influx of Greek and Italian migrants after the war, and many of them bought the smaller cottages in Unley. They bought homes in particular suburbs at that time in Unley (Parkside and Goodwood, for example) which were not necessarily seen as a place to live back in the fifties and sixties.

They bought those homes, raised their families, and they still live in their homes now. Many of them bought more than one home. They were thinking of their future, their children, and they bought homes elsewhere. Of course, they have seen an increase in property values over the years, through no fault of their own. When they bought their home in the City of Unley at that time they could have bought a home in Pasadena, or in any of the developing suburbs such as Golden Grove, or in the new southern suburbs that were being built, for a very similar price.

When I go to the events that are put on by the Italian and Greek communities, in Unley in particular, the key concern they have every year is their rates. They are very conscious of the cost of living. If they are not on the pension they are on fixed incomes, or they are getting a return on property that they have purchased for their retirement. Of course, we know that return on property is very low against its value, but the rates, of course, are based on the value of the property. The motivation for the Liberal Party's policy, of course, for capping council rates was to put a discipline in place for councils, and I know that Mayor Clyne went through the importance of that in his submission to the committee.

When I was on that committee, my observations were that when there were witnesses giving evidence in favour of rate capping, certainly the government members on that committee tended to be much more aggressive towards those witnesses than they were on those who were defending the status quo or, if you like, Labor Party policy. It was particularly obvious when the ASU was giving advice. Of course, the ASU is the major union that represents council workers—predominantly white-collar council workers—and I would argue it has an enormous stake in the status quo.

In the limited questioning that I was allowed, and from some of the answers I did get back, I was able to establish that the ASU benefits enormously from having more direct employees working in local government. In other words, employees who are employed by the council, because they are fodder for union membership. Of course, the union benefits from that membership financially. If they are able to persuade those people to join, they are able to take a membership fee from them.

We know the ASU is responsible for placing members of parliament into this parliament. So, they are very much involved in our political system. The more members they have, the more power they have for the left faction and the ALP conference, and more of their own left-aligned members will be able to get into the parliament. That battle between a left and a right happens at those conferences for parliamentary seats in the pyramid of power that is the Labor Party in South Australia, and the ASU plays a very important role for the left.

I asked a number of questions about how the union benefits from the system that we have at the moment and, unfortunately, the Chair would not allow me to continue on that line of questioning. One of the questions that finally shut me down altogether was when I was simply inquiring as to whether the elected president of the ASU was paid her salary by the council that she was employed at, as a council employee, while she did her full-time work as president of the ASU. We do not know the answer to that question because it was not allowed—I was shut down by the Chair at the time.

It defeats the purpose of a parliamentary inquiry and makes you question the majority report. It is something that I would argue is a conflict of interest for the Labor Party, that is, membership of the ASU and the effect that has on parliamentary representation for one particular faction in the Labor Party, where we are not able to ask questions about how the current system works with the ASU and the financial benefits that the ASU, and its membership, are able to attract by—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Elder has a point of order?

Ms DIGANCE: Yes, I draw your attention to standing order 128, relevance.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: It is difficult to see how union elections have anything to do with rate capping.

Mr PISONI: I am quoting from Hansard. What, the Hansard of the Economic—

Ms Digance: It's still irrelevant.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: It's still irrelevant.

Mr PISONI: —and Finance Committee is not relevant to the Economic and Finance Committee. Is that what you are ruling?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: All I am dealing with—

Mr PISONI: Are you ruling that?

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! All I am dealing with is the fact that you are talking about a report, and I am trying to bring the relevance of the debate to the report.

Mr PISONI: This is Hansard from those hearings, madam. Hansard from those hearings.

Ms Digance interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: It's not my point of order.

Mr PISONI: It is just extraordinary, isn't it? Extraordinary. Absolutely extraordinary. There they are again, behaving—

Ms DIGANCE: I am still standing for my point of order.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Sit down.

Members interjecting:

Ms DIGANCE: Yes, it is still a point of order, 128.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: We will listen closely.

Mr PISONI: Of course, we know why the member for Elder is—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just keep on the debate.

Mr PISONI: We know why this is a sensitive matter, forcing young people to join the shoppies union with her McDonald's—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Just remain on topic.

Mr PISONI: So she can prop herself up—

Mr PICTON: Point of order.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Sit down.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Well, he is. If we could just remain—

An honourable member interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! If we could just keep on the topic, which is the report, which has nothing to do with the member for Elder's thinking on anything else. Let's get back to what you have to say.

An honourable member interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! We just want to hear what he has to say.

The Hon. A. KOUTSANTONIS: I move a point of order; that is, he impugned improper motive on the member for Elder and he should apologise and withdraw immediately.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: She is actually in the room. Sit down. She is actually in the room herself, so if she is feeling attacked, she will say so. Now we are going to listen and pay very close attention to the member for Unley in his final two minutes.

Ms DIGANCE: Madam Chair, I do feel attacked—improper motives. I would actually like an apology.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: The member for Elder has asked for an apology.

Mr PISONI: I will not do so, madam. If you want to set up a parliamentary privileges committee, I can bring witnesses forward who can talk about the way you treated them as staff. So you choose.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! Sit down. Order! Everyone needs to be quiet.

Members interjecting:

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Order! In the interest of the business of the house, we will note that you have refused to apologise to the member, and I ask you to conclude your remarks in your final 30 seconds.

Mr PISONI: Thank you, madam. I just want to touch on the comments made by Mr Crombie, who was the lead consultant for financial sustainability for the Local Government Association. We hear this argument from the Local Government Association that infrastructure has suffered in New South Wales because of the cap in New South Wales, but when I asked him how that was measured, and if there was a comparison with what happened in South Australia, this is how he finished the change—

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Unfortunately, we will not be able to hear that now. Is there another speaker? Is the member for Hammond trying to draw my attention?

Mr PEDERICK (Hammond) (11:53): Yes, absolutely.

The DEPUTY SPEAKER: Hard to miss, isn't it? Go, member for Hammond.

Mr PEDERICK: I rise to speak to the 91^st report of the Economic and Finance Committee entitled Inquiry into Local Government Rate Capping Policies. I am a little bit intrigued with the stance of the Local Government Association. It is running a campaign against the Liberal Party because we have this proposal about rate capping. As the shadow minister and the member for Goyder has outlined, it does not mean that your rates will be capped at a certain level if the council is prepared to have a discussion with their community and put forward proposals for infrastructure builds and spending that they need to conduct within their council areas, put that to the public in a transparent way.

As has been indicated, 35 out of 36 times in another jurisdiction, that has happened. For the life of me I cannot see why the good citizens of South Australia would vote against saving money. The Local Government Association can lobby that way if it wishes. Whether it is state levies, federal taxation or council rates, people just want to see something back for what they are paying. My concern is that over the last few years especially, probably over more than a decade, councils have lost their way from their core responsibilities of roads, rates and rubbish, and I know they have expanded a lot more than this. I know they are involved in libraries and a whole range of other matters, but do we need this level of government involved in all these other matters?

I look at rubbish, and in my local council area we have the three bin system which is great. We have the waste bin, the recycling bin and we even have a green bin, but if you want those bins to be picked up you have to be privileged to be on the route to get them picked up in the Coorong council area. There were bin banks put in originally, and that was fine for the people who got onto them, but at another place of abode when I was renting a farmhouse just down from the farm I could not negotiate that for years to get involved in the bin bank, so I was rather disappointed.

However, with this rubbish collection, you pay for that now with a separate rubbish fee, so that is not even linked to rates at all. That takes that out from the rate argument, and that is fine because we want the ability to have these bins and we want the ability to have them picked up. Considering what councils' core issues are, I think this is reflected in some of the feedback I get from local councils, because councils are going into issues about how much money they are spending on art programs or other issues like that.

One that really intrigued me the other day to do with a council up here in Adelaide towards the Hills came up in a conversation at a dinner I was having with a footy club president who was talking to me about how the social inclusion officer from the council was offended with their football club because it was an all-male football club. I said, 'Yes, generally men play football. Don't you run the netball alongside like we do in the country?' He said, 'No, this is just a football club.'

In our football club at Peake, and right through the Mallee league, we have girls who can play up to the age of 16. I have mentioned a name in this place before of a player who is currently in Queensland playing in the under 15 women's side, Abbie Ballard. She was best on ground for her first game the other day. They did not go so well but she was best, as she should be. She is a little rocket.

I was intrigued to think that a council close to the city has a social inclusion officer. I question why you would be doing that. Why would you be doing that at local government level and giving heat to a local football club about how they manage their sport because it is essentially for men? What the president of this football club said to this social inclusion officer was, 'So, what do you want me to do? Do you want me to shut down the club, and all these kids in all these teams who play in the mornings, we will put them back on the streets and you work it out after that?' I think they suddenly had a rethink.

This is what I am saying: people look for value for money for their rates. In country electorates, especially with dirt roads and gravel roads and considering the maintenance of those roads, it is a key function that people want their rate money spent on. I have had people in some council areas come to me and say, 'We are on the end of the council area and we want to move into another one because we are not getting enough service on our roads.' I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.