Institute for Private Enterprise
COMPERE: A Melbourne based Think Tank has compared movements in Brisbane rates under the past two Brisbane Mayors and found that Jim Soorley’s reign has produced a thirty-eight percent increase. The Institute for Private Enterprise run by former Federal Treasury official, Des Moore, analysed rates under Mr Soorley and the previous Lord Mayor, Sallyanne Atkinson. Des Moore, what did your figures reveal? DES MOORE: Well, Judy, those rates are on a per head basis and what they show is that after allowing for inflation under Lord Mayor Soorley’s administration there has been a thirty-eight percent increase as you mentioned, but under the previous administration of Sallyanne Atkinson per head rates have actually declined in real terms, so there’s a very marked contrast. I’m talking here about general rates. If you include what they call the separate rate and the environment levy which are in a sense also general rates then the increase under the Soorley administration becomes fifty percent on a per head basis. So he’s charging a head well above the inflation rate by contrast with what happened under the previous administration. COMPERE: How do these compare with other local authority areas of a similar size? MOORE: Well, it’s very difficult to get comparable analyses because the ABS only gets this information from the Brisbane City Council and from other Councils… other major Councils on a confidential basis, and also the statistics are published with a considerable time lag. For instance, the latest figures published for rates is nineteen… is 1997/98. COMPERE: And these are the rates… the figures you were using, where did you get these from? MOORE: Well, I got these from… by going through all the various annual reports of the Brisbane City Council, quite painstakingly extracting them from successive annual reports. The Brisbane City Council does publish some historical financial data but it doesn’t publish that information for rates and utility charges, and I’m proposing in my analysis, in my report, that all the candidates in this election should undertake that if they are elected they will move to have the Council advise the ABS that they’ve got no objection to publishing details of revenues and expenditures historically and on a basis comparable with other State government agencies. COMPERE: Why do this type of survey now? You would know that Brisbane is in the midst of a local government election campaign? MOORE: Well, I run a watchdog Think Tank which keeps an eye on what governments are doing regardless of whether they’re Labor or Liberal. I’ve issued a number of reports, for example, in Victoria criticising the former Kennett government here and also when Mr Greiner was in office in New South Wales I did the same thing and, similarly, I did some reports before the Kennett government came into office here, including one on local government. So I keep a track on what… how local governments and others are performing. At the time I did the report on local government in Victoria we were able to get information on individual local government authorities but the ABS is no longer publishing that. COMPERE: It does play… or it would be valuable ammunition, though, for the Liberal Party. Do you have links to the Liberal Party? MOORE: I have no links with the Liberal Party at all. I’m no… not a member of the Liberal Party or of any political party. I keep quite independent. COMPERE: You may like to hold on. We have the Mayor, Jim Soorley, on the phone. Well, Lord Mayor, a fifty percent increase. That’s pretty substantial. What’s happened? JIM SOORLEY: Julie, it’s not true. And what we have here is a Right Wing ideolog out of Victoria who’s just decided he’d cobble together a few figures for his own purpose. Now, it’s interesting, Julie, last election we had the same thing done by the Liberal Party up here. Once again, we had a supposed independent thinker produce a similar report as this one. Look, this guy is the only guy in Australia that looks at rates on a per head basis instead of a per property basis. But let’s have a look at a couple of facts. He compares six years of Sallyanne with eight years of me without taking into account… so you’ve immediately got a twenty-five percent increase for a start because you’re dealing with eight years instead of six. His figures also fail to take into account that under Atkinson it what cash accounting. Here it’s accrual accounting. And there are other factors that have been bought to account under accrual accounting. And, look, it’s just factually wrong. In his document he says capital spending for the ‘97/98 year was three hundred and thirty-nine million dollars. It wasn’t, it was four hundred and sixty-seven point three million dollars, a one hundred and thirty-nine percent increase. COMPERE: So what would you say your increase… the increase in rates has been under your term? SOORLEY: Well, I can actually give you the facts, and it might be good for this gentleman out of Melbourne who is known as a Right Wing… COMPERE: Well, let’s not worry about the private attacks… SOORLEY: Well, no… COMPERE: … Lord Mayor. Let’s have a look at the figures… SOORLEY: Okay. COMPERE: Which you’re insisting… SOORLEY: Okay. COMPERE: … on showing us. SOORLEY: In 1991/92 the total rates revenue for Brisbane was four hundred and thirty-three million dollars. COMPERE: Yes, but what is a Brisbane ratepayer paying? SOORLEY: No. I’m giving you… I’m giving you that. This year it’s six hundred and seventy-three million dollars. When you take out the increase in the number of properties it’s a one percent increase per annum after inflation…one percent per annum over nine years. COMPERE: So how would that translate into a per head basis as Mr Moore is arguing on? SOORLEY: Well, no-one… no-one in Australia does it on a per head basis. Look, family… the size of families have changed in the ten years. There used to be about two point six persons in a household. There’s now two point two. The Courier Mail published the rates comparisons of south-east Queensland. Brisbane has the lowest rates in south-east Queensland. He said how… you asked him how they compare. It’s very easy. Compare the rates of Brisbane with the rest of south-east Queensland and you’ll know that we have the lowest rates in south-east Queensland published in the Courier Mail. COMPERE: Well, certainly Mr Moore is saying that he would like some of those figures to be more public. Would you give a commitment to making those figures more public? SOORLEY: I don’t… well, they’re absolutely public. They’re published in the budget, they’re published in our Annual Report in detail every year, and they’re… COMPERE: He’s also calling on you to commit to not increasing rates by more than inflation in the future. Would you do that? SOORLEY: Well, we will continue to give value for money for the ratepayers. This guy is obviously a fellow traveller with the Liberal Party and he’s cobbled together figures that no-one else in Australia deals with. I have never come across an organisation that looks at rates per head. It’s always rates per property. The increase on those, less the growth in the number of properties. COMPERE: What would you say to the Lord Mayor’s criticism, Mr Moore? MOORE: I would say that he shows a remarkable degree of ignorance about analysis of local government performance because analyses done in New South Wales and Victoria have definitely been on a per head basis and for a very good reason, that the residents of the area covered actually have to pay the rates either directly or indirectly through the increase… through charges that businesses have to pass on to them. So I don’t think Mr Soorley has any idea of what should be done and the correct way to analyse it, and the correct way is undoubtedly on a per head basis, and if he… if he’s challenging my figures then he’s actually challenging the figures that he’s published in his annual reports. COMPERE: Okay, gentlemen. Thank you for your time. Des Moore, the Director of the Institute for Private Enterprise in Victoria, and Lord Mayor Jim Soorley | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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