Remember when politicians and their bureaucrats patted us on the head and told us not to worry, that the lock-up of Tasmania’s remaining public forest estate would have no impact on private forest owners?
Well, much as saying ‘we told you so’ is unbecoming, we told you so. Events in the past week or so have proven our comments to be prophetic.
Two sawmills have indicated they will soon close because they can’t get enough log supply. This is not because logs have disappeared – there’s plenty around in private forests – but because there are no longer enough contractors to cut and deliver product. Then, this week, we’ve seen the disastrous impacts of the reduction in forest industry activity flow through to local government.
Quite unashamedly, the aldermen and managers of Break O’Day municipality have deemed that, if the decimated forest industry can no longer pay its fair share of rates, then they will pick up the difference from just one sector of ratepayers – the farmers.
Rates in Break O’Day were already significantly higher than in neighbouring council areas. now we’re hearing reports of some farmers’ rates going up by more than 40 per cent – even as property values have fallen. One farmer has told us their rates have doubled – from $5000 a year to $10,000. That is outrageous.
Let’s put this in context.
What these local bureaucrats have deemed fair play is to impose a wealth tax on those who mortgage themselves to the hilt to buy land to grow crops, breed livestock, to feed the nation. Because they are buying more than a quarter-acre block, they are deemed to be rich beyond a council clerk’s wildest dreams and therefore ripe for the plucking.
The rationale for rates is not rocket science. Rates are payment for services rendered to ratepayers (and others) by local government.
But for farmers, there is no service. Even where there is, it is miniscule compared to the services expected by the good citizens who live in the towns and suburbs that the councils primarily serve. Farmers make little or no call on the council’s purse, other than to expect some potholes to be filled now and again. Nobody collects their rubbish; they don’t go to the tip; they don’t have footpaths; they don’t have car parks. Which makes you wonder why they pay anything at all.
Furthermore, rates should not be a wealth tax. There is no relationship between land value and services provided. Even worse, there is no relationship between land value and capacity to pay.
People assume that if you run a farm, you must be well off.
Sorry, it’s not like that. A farmer’s capacity to pay is determined by farm income, not the value of their property. Many farmers are in exactly the same position as pensioners – asset rich but cash poor.
If the farmer has to pay higher rates, they have no capacity to pass on the cost. The buck stops with the farmer … in this as in so many other things.
Week after week, we hear about more and more costs and frustrations that farmers have to deal with. Week after week, we hear farm gate prices are falling while at the same time many major input costs are rising. Week after week, consumers expect food prices to fall even when the cost everything else goes up. It simply doesn’t work.
And peope wonder why farmers are getting really p…ed off.
