Cracking down on council rates and bad behaviour

Providing council rate relief to ease cost of living pressures and cracking down on bad council behaviour are key pillars of the Marshall Government’s local government reform legislation.

The Marshall Government has today released the Statutes Amendment (Local Government Review) Bill to be introduced into South Australian Parliament which will deliver the biggest and most wide-ranging reforms to the local government sector.

Premier Steven Marshall said providing council rate relief was an important part of the Liberal Government’s strong plan to ease cost of living pressures for South Australians.

“We are delivering the cost of living relief we promised for South Australian households and businesses,” said Premier Marshall.

“Last week we announced the single biggest cost of living relief measures regarding water bills which builds on our massive ESL bill reductions, lowering car rego costs and abolishing payroll tax for all small businesses.

“Now we are moving to provide council rate relief for South Australians who have been subjected to massive rate hikes over the last decade or more.”

Minister for Transport, Infrastructure and Local Government Stephan Knoll said the sweeping local government reforms had been developed with the sector over the last 18 months.

“We are reforming the local government sector and our number one priority is to provide council rate relief for South Australian households and businesses,” said Minister Knoll.

“Last year Peter Malinauskas and the Labor Party blocked our legislation to cap council rates, denying all South Australian households and businesses cost of living relief.

“We have spent 18 months consulting with the local government sector and the community and are now introducing wide sweeping reforms to provide rate relief.

“We are also cracking down on bad behaviour in councils that all South Australians are sick of hearing about and that stifles councils’ ability to deliver services for their community.

“Rogue council behaviour isn’t going to be tolerated under our reforms and we will establish a ‘Behavioural Standards Panel’ to deal with repeated or serious misbehaviour and suspend members for up to 3 months.

“We are slashing red tape and simplifying regulations to lessen the burden on councils that will help make them more efficient and deliver better services for the community.”

Key reform areas include;

  • Lower costs and enhanced financial accountability;
  • Stronger council member capacity and better conduct;
  • Efficient and transparent local government representation; and,
  • Simpler regulation.

Other key reforms in the Bill are:

  • Requiring all councils to have an independent and skilled audit and risk committee, to ensure council members are provided with high quality advice on critical financial and governance matters;
  • Requiring councils to include clear information on proposed rate increases in draft annual business plans that are released each year, to ensure ratepayers can understand and engage with this critical decision;
  • Based on independent advice, the Minsiter will have the power to give a council a driection which could limit future rate icnreases;
  • Requiring the Remuneration Tribunal of South Australia to set appropriate salary bands for all council chief executive officers;
  • Requiring councils to receive and consider independent advice when employing, managing, and, if necessary, terminating a chief executive officer;
  • Improvements to local government elections to reduce costs and other impacts on councils, particular for supplementary elections; and,
  • A range of red-tape reductions to lessen the burden on councils when holding information sessions for members; managing members’ registers of interest; publishing material; changing the status of land; providing permits and authorisations and dealing with reviews of council decisions.

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