Yarra rubbish is on the nose

WHAT an outrageous load of rubbish. As if councils weren’t already on the nose — the City of Yarra is making a stink with a ridiculous and extortionate bin tax aimed at raising an extra $8 million a year.

The City of Yarra is making a stink with a ridiculous and extortionate bin tax.

WHAT an outrageous load of rubbish.

As if councils weren’t already on the nose — the City of Yarra is making a stink with a ridiculous and extortionate bin tax aimed at raising an extra $8 million a year.

Who would have thought the runaway rate rises over the past decade on the back of skyrocketing property prices have not been enough to sate the voracious appetite councils have for taking residents for granted?

Yarra’s astonishing answer to a 2 per cent cap on rate rises imposed by the state government is to slug ratepayers with a $247 bin tax to collect their rubbish.

As revealed in Saturday’s Herald Sun, this Greens-dominated council (which blew $500,000 on lawyers and a campaign fighting the East West Link) thinks it deserves additional revenue for carrying out what is one of the most basic, cornerstone responsibilities councils have — to collect the neighbourhood bins.

Instead of a focus on the fundamental three Rs — keeping rates affordable, fixing roads and collecting rubbish — the third tier of government sees its modern function as a champion of social change, promoter of weird art and climate change warrior.

The rubbish tax comes as Yarra council forecasts an extra $11 million in rate revenue next year courtesy of a boom in inner-city development.

Households and businesses will be slugged an annual $247.50 charge to have a standard 120-litre bin collected, while a 240-litre bin will cost a whopping $800 a year and a small 80-litre bin will cost $164.

Annual rates in the municipality range from about $1550 a year to $3000.

Yarra’s draft budget also predicts a fat $15 million surplus next financial year as its rubbish tax helps pull in more and more revenue to be to frittered away on pet projects.

Yarra City mayor Amanda Stone.

Yarra and many other suburban councils are expert at wasting money on sister city partnerships, attending international talk fests, fact-finding junkets and carbon reduction programs — but they have forgotten the true purpose of local government.

And that is certainly not to spend time coming up with creative ways to rip off residents — particularly on basic service delivery.

Greens mayor Amanda Stone attempted to defend this absurd bin tax, arguing waste disposal costs are up about 6 per cent. Cr Stone even had the front to threaten a cut to services if council isn’t given carte blanche power to impose the fee.

Tellingly, this misguided mayor also blamed an alleged need for more revenue on the state government’s 2 per cent rate cap.

Like we’ve seen with sports and community clubs in Frankston and Hastings in the past week — many councils think they are a law unto themselves and whack up exorbitant rents, fees and charges — by several hundred per cent in some cases — to generate extra revenue.

All Melburnians will be furious at the bin tax because, as the Ratepayers Association said, other councils will look at Yarra and think, “great, we’ll have a go at bins too”.

The Andrews Government must step in immediately — it rightly imposed the 2 per cent rate cap unless exceptional circumstances allowed an exemption — and has a duty to ensure that cap is not circumvented by new charges.

Premier Daniel Andrews and his Local Government Minister must insist the bin tax is killed before it is adopted in June — otherwise sack the council and appoint administrators.

People are sick of local, state and federal governments digging further into hip pockets because they fail to constrain bureaucratic spending and waste.

Premier Daniel Andrews defended the appointment of Karen Cain as merit-based. Picture: Jason Edwards

JOBS MUST COME FIRST

MEANWHILE, the state Labor Government has decided to pay a bureaucrat a fortune to run an employment program in the Latrobe Valley, which is bleeding jobs.

With the closure of the Hazelwood power station, blue-collar workers in the valley would be questioning the Andrews Government’s priorities.

Lifelong public servant Karen Cain, a former president of the South Gippsland branch of the Labor Party, will be paid $340,000 a year as the new executive officer of the Latrobe Valley Authority.

LVA, with a $20 million budget, is tasked with helping establish employment programs to transition about 750 people whose jobs were lost when Hazelwood shut and build wider economic development.

Ms Cain will join an ex-Labor candidate and a one-time adviser to Mr Andrews at LVA and it is understood all three are on six-figure salaries. That is a big slice of the LVA budget and accusations of political nepotism have been raised, including one local community leader who said: “The only well-paying jobs they’ve brought appear to be their own.”

While Premier Daniel Andrews defended the appointments as merit-based, you have to question why such hefty salaries are paid to administrators when the real need is the locals, who face one of the state’s highest unemployment rates of 11.2 per cent.