Advocating for the shire

FIRSTLY, I’d like to thank the community for coming together to help shape the council plan in a deliberative panel session held in chambers on the evening of Friday 30 May. By all accounts, it was a productive session where the panel sorted through the many bits of feedback that we have received as part of the engagement period. The council plan is a major piece of work for us – it determines the work council does over the next four years. We’ll now go over that feedback and draft a plan, which we will put back out to the community for further feedback. The Deputy Mayor and I travelled to Melbourne to protest the introduction of the new and unfair Emergency Services Volunteer Fund (ESVF) on the steps of parliament with at least 5,000 other frustrated taxpayers on Tuesday 20 May. It was a powerful experience with speakers from all walks of life and all sides of politics uniting to say that this tax hurts everyone in our communities. Our councillors have been vocal in our opposition to this unfair tax since we unanimously voted to advocate against it in February. Following the rally, the state government announced a temporary backdown on unfairly taxing regional communities by capping the ESVF temporarily. Unfortunately, a temporary suspension for primary producers to not have to pay this financial year is not enough. We still feel this tax is unfair to our community. We don’t want our community to have to pay the enormous increase, and we certainly don’t want to be the ones who have to collect it. So, we’ll continue to advocate against the tax, and I’m pleased we advocated so strongly against the ESVF. The state budget saw Mansfield Shire left out again. A host of initiatives were announced and all of them were extremely metro-centric, for example, free public transport for the state’s kids. How will that benefit Mansfield Shire, where barely any public transport exists? With no free transport for our children to travel to Mt Buller for the day. It’s great that they are injecting some money into their poor road network. However, there’s nothing extra for roundabouts, which we’ve been saying we need – especially those on the intersections with state roads, like the Dead Horse Lane intersection with Midland Highway. We continue to push for safer intersections with priority roundabouts being advocated for on Dead Horse Lane, Greenvale and Mt Buller Roads, Chenery and Malcolm Streets and the Highton Lane Mt Buller Road intersection. Early June brought a bit of rain, but our community needs much more. I was pleased to see that the little rain we did get helped the Mt Buller ski season get off to a good start. Visitors to the alpine areas are an important boost to our local economy every year, and a good snow season will make a lot of difference to many of our businesses. On behalf of Mansfield Shire, I wrote to the Minister for Agriculture, Ros Spence, to request that Mansfield Shire is considered in the drought declaration. I also co-signed a letter from the Hume Regional Local Government Network to the Minister to advocate for a comprehensive drought support program that provides the same level of support to our shire as other areas on the state, and in line with other natural disasters. At the time I’m writing this, I’m hopeful that our community may get some real relief in the way of funding for infrastructure and feed.

Advocating for the shire

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