Hervey Bay Gossip

When your rates are more than your income tax you may begin to wonder if it’s time for the Fraser Coast Regional Council to take a serious look at non-essential costs. Jim MacKellar certainly thinks so.

Over half of the ratepayers on the Fraser Coast will pay more in Council rates and charges this year than they will in income tax.

Analysis of the Median Household Income figures from the last national census, suburb by suburb, reveal that the FCRC is one of the few, if not the only, local government in the country that takes a larger slice of the financial cake than does the Commonwealth Government.

Local government has long claimed to be the poor relation in Australian governance because of the limits on their tax base. But the FCRC has now shown how to reverse this imbalance and break free of its spending constraints.

But one must wonder if they have taken into consideration the ability of people to pay these amounts of money. This consideration is set out in their own Revenue Policy.

Have they considered that they govern one of the most economically challenged and welfare dependent regions in the whole nation? We have more struggling households then anywhere else in the country.

When people are struggling to make ends meet they usually budget in a way that cuts out all but the necessary costs. Luxuries and extravagances are avoided and every dollar is stretched to its limit. This is certainly true of our pensioner community.

I would have hoped that our Council, as leaders of the community, might have been prepared to adopt a similar outlook when spending ratepayers money. But they do not seem to understand what it is like to have to struggle to keep body and soul together. Either that or they just simply do not care.

We hear quite often that the tourism industry in Hervey Bay is in trouble. We hear quite often that the building industry in Hervey Bay is also in trouble but when you look around the town it still seems quite a prosperous place.

The reality though is quite different and last week’s decision by the Stockland Group not to by Centro Hervey Bay is a clear indication of just how bad things really are for Hervey Bay.

When a major investment falls over because an investor with the stature of the Stockland Group decides, after researching the situation, that the town can’t support a major development such as Stage 2 of Centro there’s no escaping the fact that the economy of this town is in trouble.

It appears that maybe the Centro deal is not the only one to fall over in the last month.

There’s a strong rumour that this one … just down the road from Ramada … has also fallen over