Moorabool worth-less

By Kate Taylor

An Auditor General’s report has confirmed what Moorabool Shire Council has been saying for years – that the state government does not give it enough money, and each person is only worth the price of a ‘smashed avo’ focaccia and a coffee
‘Outcomes of Investing in Regional Victoria’ was an audit report tabled in parliament on 2nd May 2019, which looked at whether the state government-run Regional Development Victoria’s grants and funding had actually ended up benefitting regional Victoria or not.
The report found that on a per-head basis Moorabool residents received $15 from the state government in RDV funding, compared to nearby Ballarat which received $805 per resident.
Moorabool Mayor Paul Tatchell said the figure is even worse than he expected.
“I thought it was $80, but it’s $15,” he told the Moorabool News. “I think they thought they were going to come down here and see Moorabool as wasting money, not doing the right thing when actually there’s just not enough funding.
“The irony is that it’s an Auditor General’s report from the state government – it’s shoved it in their face really, it’s their audit that proved our point, that we’re under-funded.”
It means that the cost of infrastructure has largely fallen on council to pay.
“To add insult to injury, for every rate dollar we’re collecting, 82 cents is put back into capital works because of the lack of government funding – which puts us up with the highest infrastructure spending shires in the state with one of the lowest revenues.
“The federal government should be stepping forward too – but it won’t, even with the election,” Cr Tatchell says.
“The councils that are doing the right thing in the bush are getting shafted by a thing called ‘safe-seat-itis’.”
Now, with the Auditor General’s report putting firm numbers to the problem, where does it go from here?
“It doesn’t go anywhere. Nothing’s going to change, they don’t care,” Cr Tatchell said.
“And part of our problem is, we’re 15-years away from getting the economy of scale to have proper investment in terms of infrastructure – because of our enormous growth rate in the peri-urban, we will eventually have enough numbers to get it back on a level keel, but in the meantime, the rate dollar is just going to have to be invested where the state and federal governments aren’t interested. What’s going to happen over the next 15-years? We’ll be that far behind it doesn’t matter,” he said.