Rural councillors deserve same pay as city colleagues, remuneration tribunal hears

Many local councillors and mayors should get a big pay bump, a review into their remuneration has heard.

Laura Binks, the mayor of Strathbogie Shire. Picture: Supplied

All local councillors across Victoria should be paid consistently for the “enormous” work they do, a remuneration tribunal has been told.

And the lower allowances given to rural councillors is hurting diversity by attracting mainly retired people to the work, the tribunal has heard.

How much a councillor or mayor is paid depends on a three-tiered system based on the size of a municipality.

Councillors from category 1 councils — mainly in rural areas — get $25,147 in allowances while mayors earn $77,933.

Rural councillors have been kept busy managing flood recovery operations. Picture: David Caird

Allowances for category three councils, mainly Melbourne metro, are $37,565 for councillors and $124,469 for mayors.

Laura Binks, mayor of Strathbogie Shire in the state’s north, told the Victorian Independent Renumeration Tribunal there should be a consistent wage for councillors, deputies and mayors across the whole state.

This was because they were all bound by the same legal requirements and those based in smaller shires still had an “enormous” workload.

“I find the current division of councils into various categories inconsistent with other levels of government and not reflective of the enormous amount of work mayors, deputy mayors and councillors do in smaller shires,” Ms Binks said in her submission.

“As a mayor of a shire who has been hit hard by the current floods... I can assure you our whole council team have worked hard to ensure our community are informed, safe and supported during this natural disaster and that we will continue to as the long period of recovery kicks in.”

Ms Binks said that lower pay in rural councils meant they mainly attracted retired people, and “having a council that lacks the diversity of the community it represents does not allow for the best outcomes”.

The tribunal is considering whether to increase current allowances, but any move to put all councillors and mayors on the highest rates would cost Victorian ratepayers millions of dollars extra.

Ratepayers Victoria president Dean Hurlston. Picture: Kiel Egging.

Some 78 councils would be impacted by the suggestion to equalise pay rates.

Having all of these councils on the top tier pay bracket would result in ratepayers shelling out more than $33m a year to councillors and mayors, an estimate by the Herald Sun shows.

The estimate assumes an average council size of nine members including the mayor.

In contrast, paying all councillors and mayors the bottom pay bracket would cost ratepayers around $21.8m a year.

Council Watch vice-president Dean Hurlston said that before inequity claims are addressed, there should be a focus on basic councillor standards.

“What we want to see is some expected minimum standards of performance inserted in the Local Government Act regulations that residents can hold their elected councillors to,” he said.

“Currently there are some councillors who work very hard for residents and put in extraordinary hours while some councillors barely do anything.”

Another submission to the tribunal, submitted by a de-identified person, criticised a previous decision in which deputy mayors got significantly higher pay than ordinary councillors.

“The big discrepancy between the allowances for councillors and deputy mayors has seen a sudden interest in a lot of councillors wanting to become the deputy mayor, not because they’d be good in a leadership role, but because they will get paid double with very little extra commitments attached,” that submission said.