They are the three Rs that have long defined the fundamentals of local councils: roads, rates and rubbish. Despite basic service delivery being the bread and butter of local governments, a suburban Melbourne council has attracted the fiery frustration of residents over a decision to separate charges for rubbish collection from its general rates.
At a Yarra city council meeting on Tuesday night, residents from an area known for its community activism protested against a new waste levy charge for ratepayers being passed. In the eyes of disgruntled residents, the separate levy – which is also applied by various councils across Victoria and in some other states – is a “bin tax”.
The council argues it is a financial necessity amid the costs associated with the state government’s new four-bin waste and recycling scheme, in line with other parts of Australia.
Adam Promnitz, the founder of the Yarra Residents Collective, which has been central to the pushback, claims the council concealed a cash grab to circumvent state-imposed rates caps and criticises the lack of consultation.
“They’re not just going and putting this surcharge in out of good faith,” he says. “The only reason they are doing this is to get around the rate capping.”
The Andrews government’s rates cap will force ratepayers to fork out an extra 3.5% in costs from July – less than the current rate of inflation of 7.4%. By separating the waste charge from general rates, councils are able to increase revenue beyond the cap. Guidelines from the Essential Services Commission stipulate that the revenue can only be used to cover the cost of providing waste and recycling services in the area.
A Monash University Sustainable Development Institute researcher, Jennifer Macklin, who specialises in Australia’s waste industry, says the model being adopted by the council is essentially a basic user-pays model but differs from a weight-based charging model.
“A strong user-pays model would see you paying based on how much you use, just like with electricity and water, meaning those who produce more waste [by weight] pay more for their waste service,” she says.
“Instead, the Yarra approach – which is standard across Victoria, South Australia and NSW – is a flat rate which involves people who don’t produce as much waste subsidising people who do produce a lot. I suspect that is as far as Australia will go with user-pays. I’ve not yet seen any council in Australia with the appetite to try a weight-based system, though some overseas places have successfully implemented such a model.”
Macklin says there is also likely to be a disconnect between the public’s expectations of waste collection and the changed financial landscape since China effectively banned the importation of most rubbish in 2018.
“Up until recently, China paid really good money for our household recycling,” she says.
In Yarra Promnitz stresses that the residents’ concerns are above ideology, with the collective made up of people from across the political divide: “We’ve been accused of being far right and far left. We’ve got disillusioned Greens voters, Labor and Liberal voters. It really is from right across the spectrum.”
The Yarra council’s waste charge will be calculated based on property value, with ratepayers who do not receive a kerbside service exempt from the charge.
A spokesperson for the council says the decision had been implemented to tackle the rising cost of providing waste services and “ensure council’s ongoing financial sustainability”.
Opponents to the move, including three councillors who voted against it, say the council should not pass on the charge to residents and should rein in internal spending.
An independent Yarra councillor, Stephen Jolly – who has led the opposition against the levy – told Guardian Australia the fact that other councils have implemented their own charges is not a satisfactory excuse to do so in his area.
“We’re the most progressive, most leftwing council and we’ve always been a trailblazer,” he says.
“We spend half the time telling everyone we’re the best in the world, most progressive, and then when it suits them, the same people can say, ‘Oh, well, they’ve got someone else doing it.’”
Jolly argues the levy could create a slippery slope where a user-pays model is used for other services such as swimming pools.
Another independent Yarra councillor, Herschel Landes – who voted in support of the measure – says the conversation should focus on the collective duty to reduce the burden of waste management.
“I would have liked to have seen some of the anger last night directed towards the manufacturers of the waste in the first instance,” he says.
