Environmental covenants deserve rate relief, SCEG says

THE Surf Coast Energy Group (SCEG) is urging the Surf Coast Shire to add a differential rate for landholders with environmental covenants into its 2026–27 budget.

About a third of Victoria’s 48 regional and rural councils offer some form of rate rebate or concession to covenantors.

This ranges from a full rebate on land tax for the covenanted land (which applies in the Borough of Queenscliffe), a partial rebate (which applies in the City of Greater Geelong), or a per hectare rebate.

The covenants are assessed and approved by independent conservation organisation Trust for Nature, which has protected more than 119,000 hectares of freehold land across Victoria.

SCEG founder Graeme Stockton said there were three distinct bio-regions within the municipality – Otway Ranges, Otway Plain and Victorian Volcanic Plain – but the latter two had been decimated, with only about 1 per cent of them remaining.

“The Otway Plain would once have housed a whole range of woodlands, and those woodlands are critical habitat for a whole range of woodland birds,” he said.

“Without that habitat, those birds and animals will continue to decline.

“So my challenge for everyone is: are we willing to accept ongoing decline or are we interested in restoring that habitat?

“I’s not up to one individual, it’s up to all of us and council rate relief can play an important role in providing a catalyst for that.”

The Surf Coast Shire presently has three differential rates based on a property’s capital improved value: a general rate (100 per cent), a farm rate (64 per cent) and a commercial/industrial rate (165 per cent).

Stockton said a covenant rate would serve a similar purpose to the farming rate.

“It’s the same deal but this time it’s recognising that nature has equity as well,” he said.

“Essentially we should all be really grateful to any landholder who decides to set aside land where we all benefit and nature benefits, but maybe that land owner loses some of that productive land.

“So it’s sharing the cost, if you like, of of providing that greater benefit in the long term.”

He said many people would be at least surprised if not shocked the shire does not already provide rate relief for covenants.

“I know whenever you do any surveys or questionnaires, right up the top of the list for as long as I can remember the the environment has been held as either the number one or number two issue of concern for residents,” he said.

“So I think in many ways there will be a lot of people that would support this initiative.”

The shire council will consider responses to the draft budget at its 23 June meeting.