Mitchell Shire squeezed
Dear Editor,
​Victoria has developed a two-tier economic system where country families are forced to pay heavily for basic infrastructure while our metropolitan counterparts get a free ride. The Mitchell Shire is currently being squeezed by a “rates trap” that threatens the future of rural towns, and without structural change, this compounding burden will only intensify.
​To understand why, we must recognize that council rates are not just a bill for bins and roads; they are the single, solitary wealth tax currently collected in Australia. It functions as a geographic tax shelter for high-wealth metropolitan postcodes, meaning rural residents are systematically penalized.
​Consider the residential “general rate in the dollar”—the core wealth-based tax on your property value—using the City of Stonnington as our benchmark for fairness:
​City of Stonnington: 100% of the benchmark (260km of roads; 438 residents funding every kilometer)
​Mitchell Shire: 241% of the benchmark (1,475km of roads; 47 residents funding every kilometer)
​Horsham Rural City: 371% of the benchmark (2,975km of roads; seven residents funding every kilometer)
​These raw population-to-road ratios directly dictate our cost of living; it is not just about filling bins. This density gap governs every single basic service charge on our bills. Because our property pool is smaller and the distances are massive, our shire is forced to crank rates up just to survive.
​If we look at an ordinary regional home valued at $600,000, the financial penalty extracted from country families compared to a property of the exact same $600,000 value in Stonnington is glaring. Under a fair, state-wide pool system where everybody pays the exact same baseline general rate, the immediate relief on that core portion of the bill becomes undeniable.
​Because this system is entirely proportionally unfair, it applies across the board—whether your house is worth half the regional average or double it, the exact same multiplier applies. A dollar of property wealth in our towns is systematically taxed significantly harder than a dollar of property wealth in Stonnington.
​To make matters worse, regional families are dealing with a historic “double whammy” on basic services. Thirty years ago, domestic waste management was covered entirely within the core rate. Over recent decades, however, urban-centric policies stripped those services out of the asset wealth calculation and forced them onto our notices as separate itemized bills. Because garbage trucks must travel massive distances down country roads compared to heating dense city blocks, these service bills are inherently more expensive to run out here.
​We don’t accept this dynamic anywhere else in our national infrastructure. When we deliver the NBN or maintain the power grid, we mandate a universal service fee so country people aren’t penalized for where they live. Basic services like waste collection should be treated no differently. By rolling these uncapped service charges back into a single state-wide rate pool, families across the Mitchell Shire would instantly save significant annual costs by completely abolishing this hidden regional waste penalty once and for all.
​We have inherited this broken local government framework directly from the British system, and we have allowed a fundamentally unfair regional penalty to compound year after year. Even 25 years ago, the system was heavily rigged: in 2001, the Mitchell Shire’s bill was already sitting at 158% of the Stonnington baseline, while Horsham sat at roughly 210%. Today, those gaps have exploded, with Mitchell reaching 241% and Horsham climbing to 371%.
​Make no mistake: this is an escalating crisis that is guaranteed to get worse. Because urban property values continue to explode while regional population density stays low, country shires are trapped in a financial death spiral. If nothing is done, for a property with a $600,000 valuation, the annual rate gap compared to an identical home in Stonnington will reach a staggering $1850 by 2035, $2100 by 2045, and over $2450 by 2055. These figures are calculated in today’s dollars and explicitly exclude CPI; in reality, the true financial gap will be much higher. Without structural, state-wide reform, this regional penalty will keep compounding, forcing a shrinking pool of country ratepayers to carry an impossible load.
​Implementing both parts of this structural reform—a flat state-wide property pool and a universal service fee—would immediately deliver a total annual cost-of-living saving of over $850 for that same $600,000 valuation in the Mitchell Shire. It is a simple choice: we either act now to put $850 back into our pockets today, or we accept a future where we pay thousands more than our city counterparts every single year.
​With a state election on the horizon, it is time to ask our representatives where they stand. Do they support a system that uses local borders to shield concentrated city wealth while locking the regions into a compounding financial trap, or will they fight for structural reform that delivers massive cost-of-living relief straight to our households?
​James McConnell
Benalla
Footpath issues to be solved
Dear Editor,
I am writing to you to share my concerns about the road and footpath issues in Mitchell Shire, specifically on Darraweit Road, Wallan. This disgrace needs to be fixed.
To start off with, the footpath is EXTREMELY dangerous! As Darraweit Road is located on a hill, it is hard enough for the disabled, elderly and people pushing things to come up the hill, but the footpath makes it even HARDER! It is potentially dangerous for many residents and pedestrians.
Secondly, potholes are equally just as bad on this same stretch of road. Potholes are leaving residents and people passing by worried and upset. Mothers with newborn babies, young children and the elderly are all just some groups of people that could possibly be injured as they need to swerve around these annoyances on the roads.
Finally, kids walking home from school are in danger. The local schools (in this specific case, Wallan Primary School) have many students walking home from school, and come on, kids aren’t exactly the most careful people, are they? To solve this, Mitchell Shire Council could spend additional money on fixing this issue instead of other less important concerns.
So, whoever wants to go for a leisurely walk up Darraweit Road, I strongly suggest you DON’T unless this issue is fixed. Let’s set an example for the rest of the state and remove these potholes.
Willow Coleman
Our Lady Of The Way P.S
Water Security Wanting
The concerns raised in the ‘Water Buyback Concerns’ article in the NCR on 2 June 2026 are even more disturbing when you understand the Federal Government’s water buyback is primarily for environmental flows and more recently to deliver water to First Nations people for economic, environmental, social, spiritual and cultural outcomes.
While not disputing the need to address these issues, it is the result of this flawed policy – the Water Act 2007 – that has allowed the unbundling of water rights from the land it was meant to serve and has resulted in the distorted and exorbitant cost of water for our food production.
This flawed policy has financialised water and enabled water trading. Overseas and local investor traders can withhold the water shares they own from the market in pursuit of longer term trading profits that result from times of drought, or government buybacks.
Overseas ownership represented 11.8% of Australia’s water in 2023 (most current figures available, but known to be growing) and it represented 4,775 gigalitres (GL) or put another way, if you allocated 150 litres per day per person, 4,775 GL could sustain the daily use of over 5 million people for more than 17 years.
Inflated water costs disadvantage farmers providing staple foods, like diary, and pushes available water to higher value crops, like almonds – a very water intensive crop.
To quote from the book ‘Sold Down the River – How Robber Barons and Wall Street Traders Cornered Australia’s Water Market’ – “External water traders have asset stripped a generation of investment from Australia’s foodbowl.”
Isn’t it about time we prioritised water security, because without it we risk the under utilisation of prime agricultural land and this places at risk our food security.
Julie Ann Ashley
Member Protect Our Farms
