Whitsunday Regional Council votes on new 2024-2025 budget

A cautious North Queensland council kept homeowners’ annual rates remain the same, while utility charges are set to increase. We’ve taken a closer look.

Whitsunday Regional Council's Proserpine building. Picture: Architectus

A cautious Whitsunday Regional council has announced its new $264m budget for the upcoming financial year would focus on insuring homeowners’ annual rates remain the same, while water charges would skyrocket.

Councillors have voted to adopt the new 2024-2025 budget at the last special council meeting, with new Whitsunday mayor Ry Collins telling the assembly ‘significant changes’ had been made to the rating system to “dampen the impact on the huge variation of the new state government land valuations”.

It comes as the Whitsundays was particularly impacted by land value increases, with 31 per cent of household experiencing an increases of over 50 per cent, leading some residents to fear this would have a direct impact on their rates.

In his speech, Mr Collins presented council’s main measure would be to keep a “zero per cent yearly increase in general residential owner occupied rates”, while rate increases would be capped at 20 per cent for all ratepayers.

Whitsunday mayor Ry Collins has handed over his first council budget. Picture: Fiona Kroll

In council documents, it stated that this would result in 36% of ratepayers will have either a reduction or no change in the general rates charged this year, 29% of ratepayers will have an increase between 0% and 5%, and 35% of ratepayers will have an increase greater than 5%.

When comparing minimum annual rates with last year’s, we can observe rates have either remained the same or even decreased for homeowners.

This is particularly true of rates for Residential Owner Occupied – Greater than $600,000 up to $2,000,000 category, that was $5,896 this year and is would be $4,892 for the coming financial year.

Rates would increase slightly for houses that are rented out for residential dwelling having a rateable value up to $150,000, or for flats or units at a value of up to $250,000.

Councillor Gary Simpson addressed the assembly by saying the increased rates in the rural sector were “hard to stomach”, having increased from $1,685 to $2,500 but said he did not oppose the proposal.

Some major rate increases are also to be adopted for bigger commercial operations such as the bulk port or mining operations.

Water charges to increase

Cr John Finlay was the only one opposing parts of the new council budget.

Councillors offered more debate to the proposed increase of eight per cent for all water charges, including Councillor John Finlay, who told members of council these should be capped at a four per cent increase.

“People will have to spend eight per cent more to watch their children wash in the bathtub,” he said.

“By reducing whatever the exact impact of this figure is, it will have not have any effect on the capital works budget this year at all.”

“What we’ll simply be doing is use some of the retained reserve from last year to balance the budget for this year.”

“If we don’t use it now, when are we going to use it?”

A council officer responded to Finlay’s intervention by telling councillors the water fund was already in deficit.

“Historical decisions about relaxing fees and charges in state government policy have not been able to achieve the full cost of development impact,” he said before adding that not increasing charges now would be the decision of delaying the inevitable.

The Revenue Statement was adopted 6/1, with Cr Finlay opposing it.

The full breakdown of changes in residential rates

2024-2025 annual rates	2023-2024 annual rates
Residential Owner Occupied 1: Land used for an owner occupied single residential dwelling having a rateable value up to $110,000 (inclusive)	$1,061	$1,061
Residential Owner Occupied 2: Land used for an owner occupied single residential dwelling having a rateable value greater than $110,000, up to $300,000 (inclusive).	$1,196	$1,567
Residential Owner Occupied 3: Land used for an owner occupied single residential dwelling having a rateable value greater than $300,000, up to $600,000 (inclusive)	$2,838	$3,717
Residential Owner Occupied 4: Land used for an owner occupied single residential dwelling having a rateable value greater than $600,000	$4,892	$5,896
Residential 1: Land used for a single residential dwelling having a rateable value up to $150,000 (inclusive)	$1,304	$1,248
Residential 2: Land used for a single residential dwelling having a rateable value greater than $150,000 up to $400,000 (inclusive)	$1,902	$2,315
Residential 3: Land used for a single residential dwelling having a rateable value greater than $400,000 up to $600,000 (inclusive)	$4,865	$5,802
Residential 4: Land used for a single residential dwelling having a rateable value greater than $600,000 up to $1,000,000 (inclusive)	$5,978	$7,129
Residential 5: Land used for, or capable of being used for, a single residential dwelling having a rateable value greater than $1,000,000	$7,764	$11,728 Owner
Occupied Flat or Unit 1: Land used for a single owner-occupied dwelling within a multi-dwelling complex having a rateable value up to $110,000 (inclusive) 0	$1,204	$1,204 Owner
Occupied Flat or Unit 2: Land used for a single owner-occupied dwelling within a multi-dwelling complex having a rateable value greater than $110,000, up to $200,000 (inclusive)	$1,392	$1,868 Owner
Occupied Flat or Unit 3: Land used for a single owner-occupied dwelling within a multi-dwelling complex having a rateable value greater than $200,000	$2,329	$3,124 Flat
or Unit 1: Land used for a single dwelling within a multi-dwelling complex having a rateable value up to $100,000 (inclusive)	$1,413	$1,352 Flat
or Unit 2: Land used for a single dwelling within a multi-dwelling complex having a rateable value greater than $100,000, up to $500,000 (inclusive)	$3,991	$1,935 Flat
or Unit 3: Land used for a single dwelling within a multi-dwelling complex having a rateable value greater than $500,000, up to $1,000,000 (inclusive)	$5,987	$7,932 Flat
or Unit 4: Land used for a single dwelling within a multi-dwelling complex having a rateable value greater than $1,000,000	$11,175	$12,189

Originally published as Whitsunday Regional Council votes on new 2024-2025 budget