GOOSSENS, Mrs Liz, Vice President, Limestone Coast Local Government Association HART, Mr Ian, Chief Executive Officer, Kingston District Council RUFFELL, Mayor Lisa, Mayor, District Council of Robe TRAEGER, Ms Natalie, Chief Executive Officer, District Council of Robe [15:49] CHAIR: Welcome. Although the committee does not require you to give evidence under oath, I should advise you that this hearing is a legal proceeding of the parliament and therefore has the same standing as proceedings of the respective houses. The giving of false or misleading evidence is a serious matter and may be regarded as a contempt of parliament. The evidence given today will be recorded by Hansard and attracts parliamentary privilege, and is being broadcast live. I now invite you to make a brief opening statement before we proceed to discussion. Mrs Goossens : Thank you, Chair, and committee for the opportunity to appear here today. I'm here on behalf of the Limestone Coast Local Government Association, representing six councils across one of South Australia's most productive regional economies. The Limestone Coast covers more than 21,000 square kilometres and has fewer than 70,000 residents, yet it makes a big contribution to the state and national economy. On just two per cent of South Australia's landmass, our agriculture, forestry and fishing sectors generate more than $3.3 billion in annual output and around one-third of the state's agricultural production. The region also value adds through food processing, wine, timber, fibre and manufacturing. Our local councils own and maintain much of the infrastructure that enables that productivity: roads, airports, saleyards, jetties, tourism assets and other essential pieces of community and freight infrastructure. The cost of maintaining those assets falls heavily on small, dispersed rate bases. Our councils maintain almost 9,000 kilometres of local roads that support freight, agriculture, forestry, tourism, emergency access and community life; that balance is not sustainable. Financial assistance grants remain the most important Commonwealth funding mechanism for councils, because they are predictable, untied and support local decision-making. We strongly support increasing those grants and ensuring the distribution formula better recognises rurality, remoteness, road length, asset burden, limited own-source revenue and dispersed service demands. Competitive grants have a role, but they cannot replace recurrent funding that reflects the real costs of delivering services and maintaining nationally significant infrastructure in regional areas. Investing in the Limestone Coast councils is not only an investment in local government; it's an investment in food security, exports, freight efficiency, regional manufacturing, economic resilience and social national productivity. CHAIR: Thank you very much. The District Council of Robe. Ms Traeger : Good afternoon, Chair, and your fellow committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to appear today. When we lodged our submission earlier this year, we outlined the financial pressures facing a small regional council like Robe, and those pressures have since accelerated. Robe has around 1,600 permanent residents, yet during peak periods we accommodate around 20,000 people. Council must provide infrastructure and services at a scale far beyond our size, with the resources of a very small council. Sixty per cent of our ratepayers do not live in Robe. For 2025-26, our entire general purpose financial assistance grant was just $42,321. For 2026-27, this has fallen to just $35,273. It is the lowest allocation in South Australia, and it is the same per capita rate received by metropolitan councils, including Adelaide, Burnside and Unley. By comparison, other small regional councils, within the same band as Robe, received more than $1 million. There's a fair difference between $1 million and $35,000. We don't suggest that they receive too much. We question whether the methodology, producing such vastly different outcomes, adequately recognises our circumstances. We may as well receive nothing, as right now we sit next to nothing. Council operates child care, a library, a fully accredited visitor information centre, a waste transfer station and has South Australia's only owned and operated commercial working marina, which alone loses a quarter of a million dollars a year. In 2025, Robe experienced four significant weather events. The clean up from just one of those weather events exceeds our entire annual financial assistance grant allocation. In January 2025, we adopted a new coastal adaptation strategy. Those storm events took us to triggers that we anticipated reaching in the year 2050. Essentially, our coastline degraded within six months of us adopting that coastal adaptation strategy. Since our submission, council has also stepped in to secure GP services, something that is not and should not be the responsibility of local government. We provide a rent-free medical centre and have invested significantly in practitioner accommodation, amongst other things. We then sought stamp duty relief of $44,980 from that investment, from numerous state government ministers, and we couldn't even get a response. Council stepped in to secure better, more sustainable GP services, something that is not our responsibility, and for doing so we paid our state government almost $10,000 more in stamp duty than we will receive from the general purpose financial assistance grant this year. Now we are supporting the response to the avian influenza, another unforeseen demand on already lean resources, and we are at the epicentre of this virus. Meanwhile, in setting its 2026-27 budget, council made a difficult decision to cut staff and expenditure, deferred projects and asset renewal, and increase rates and fees. Yet still we've adopted a $195,000 operating deficit. We are doing what we can locally, but Robe is looking tired. Small councils cannot continue filling essential service gaps and responding to emerging risks without the funding capacity to follow. We need an increased financial assistance grant pool, a significant review of the distribution methodology, and a genuine recognition of seasonal populations and the cost of providing essential infrastructure and services in small regional communities, particularly those along the coast. CHAIR: Thank you very much. Kingston District Council. Mr Hart : Thank you, Chair, and the committee for the opportunity to present today. I'm sure you've had a long day. I put to you that a succession of federal governments, at least to some degree, have failed to provide rural councils with adequate funding to support our communities. More than 50 per cent of rural based councils in SA are already considered 'unsustainable' by ESCOSA, and that number is very likely to escalate in the next cycle of review. This should tell a compelling story, that fundamental change is required, or it will inevitably lead to a further loss of assets, amenity and wellbeing in rural communities. Trust and confidence in local councils is diminishing rapidly, while a rise in sovereign citizens is seen in some areas. These are symptoms of the inability of smaller councils to adequately respond to community needs and expectations, and which is directly linked to the decline in funding against rising operational costs and escalation in asset depreciation. Things need to change, and I urge you to look at our succinct summary of the issues, and the actions proposed to halt and help reverse this situation. Things need to change. I urge you to look at our succinct summary of issues and actions proposed to halt and help reverse this situation. I'll make three key points for reform. Firstly, if no appetite exists for an increase in the financial assistance grants, which we would argue, along with the sector, should be increased, then, at very least, we propose that a separate supplementary payment be made to councils with low density ratio populations to better support our communities. Kingston is 0.7 of a person per square kilometre. Secondly, provide some meaningful operational support towards the growing coastal challenges—as my colleague Nat has just described; we've had the same issues—rather than only having to apply for competitive grants that are mostly insufficient, and for which the funding contributions per size of council are simply not realistic. There are inconsistencies across the sector in what gets funded and what is sustainable. Thirdly, we encourage a return to some form of untied capital funding programs to enable smaller regions to renew aged infrastructure that is impactful not only for their community's wellbeing but to support the many thousands of annual tourists to enjoy, which is seen as an expectation by those visitors. I can give you an example. In our community, let's say a $5 million investment—whether it's a new jetty, a new boat ramp, renewal of a playground or whatever it might be—funded by 2½ thousand residents is a very different value proposition to one of a metro council with at least 50,000. You can do the maths. Rate contributions in small communities are already more than double what they are for the same capital value properties in metro areas. That's a consequence of having a small community. But many of our population are over 60 as well and are on fixed incomes, so that's a real challenge for our community. I am sure you're interested to know what councils are doing themselves to address these challenges and respond to greater expectations in compliance and cost shifting against rising costs, noting that many normal services delivered by councils are required under legislation, and the services that are discretionary are mostly the much valued and loved community facing ones, such as libraries. It's important to note that even small councils create significant economic impact. Business exports and jobs benefit both state and federal governments. We propose that increased support should be viewed through the lens of securing that ongoing investment that actually pays dividends. I think the Regional Australia Institute recently reported on this. I'm happy to answer questions. CHAIR: My first question is for Robe and for anyone that wants to answer as well. You've talked about the strain on the local residents and the rate base. How should Commonwealth funding arrangements be reformed to better recognise the visitor driven economy that happens in those areas? Ms Traeger : I think the key impact for us is those financial assistance grants. Whilst the federal government is obviously responsible for the pool, the issue that I have is the methodology. I'm not really sure how that sort of visitor could be reported. I'm more interested in things like the number of rateable assessments. That doesn't change. So, if you were doing that methodology on a number of rateable assessments, it doesn't matter whether that person is in their house on census night. I think it was Victor Harbor who said census has just been. Not only are 60 per cent of our people not in that house but we've got an older population off interstate seeking the sun as well. I think that more contemporary number of assessments, equity or some recognition around coastal funding and that change in that methodology is really what we're striving for in that sense. CHAIR: Mr Hart, I'm presuming you're calling for a redistribution weighted more to smaller councils? Is that— Mr Hart : I think there should be some reallocation. We know metropolitan councils have other challenges that we don't see as much, particularly around homelessness—at least not yet—but we've got infrastructure that we cannot renew. Whether it be a 20-year old playground or something else, we can look in envy at any of our metropolitan cousins and see them announcing three new ones every year. Yes, they've got to depreciate them. They've got to pay rates, but we don't even have the ability to do that. We're not doing anything new. We're trying to keep up with what we currently have. Infrastructure is ageing, and we don't have an ability to replace it. The conversation will go like this with our community: 'Do you want a new jetty? Do you expect 2½ thousand people to find $5 million or more?' The reality is everyone will say, 'Yes, of course,' but they won't be able to afford it. We need some levers just to keep pace with what's happening in cost of asset renewal, our road network et cetera. Mrs Goossens : I probably am keener for the financial assistance grants to be restored to the one per cent of the Commonwealth total taxation revenue. I know we all want more money, but, if there's more money in the pot, at least everybody then does get a bit more. I think it's dropped down to nearly half of that now. The fact that that money does come to us and we have that local decision making on how that grant money is used does give councils the opportunity to prioritise what they are doing with that grant money. All grant money is great, and it's great to go for that, but then does that really target what you see as your best direction or what you see as your priority, or are you just following the different grants that become available and therefore that becomes your higher priority because there is a grant available to perhaps address that asset that you're looking to do? If it came in that financial assistance grant money then it's sustainable, we know what's coming and it's far easier for us to manage. CHAIR: Deputy Chair. Ms PENFOLD: I might start with Mrs Goossens. In your submission, you talk about how the Commonwealth should fund the full life-cycle cost of infrastructure supporting nationally significant industries. How do we decide which local road or bridge qualifies, and what objective test distinguishes a national productivity asset from an ordinary council asset? Mrs Goossens : I think some of the Limestone Coast examples that were given to me are—perhaps even with the saleyards that councils have had to pick up. I'm certainly not in the business of running a saleyard, but the fact that the state government has put on the electronic ear tagging and how that has been—they have put in perhaps 75 per cent of the funding for that. Then the councils have had to pick up the extra 25 per cent, which has had to be passed on to landowners or stock agents and things like that. It's only coming for that initial set-up and then not continuing with the maintenance of ear tagging and things like that. That was just one of the examples that had been given to us. Even the airport in Mount Gambier, for some of the screening that was suggested to go through—that's the Southern Limestone Coast Council—they are having to foot the bill. Some of it has funding, but there is no funding for the ongoing maintenance of it. It's only the initial set-up of implementing the new regulations that have been put on to different councils. They get initial help setting it up, and often it's only 75 per cent, but then there is no funding for the ongoing running and maintenance. Ms PENFOLD: I want to pick up on the consistent theme that a lot of councils have presented to us around cost shifting from the state government. The cost shifting then is that the federal government has to find more taxpayers money to address the state government cost shifting and the increasing regulations in states. What's your view on that? What are the state governments saying to you if you go to them saying: 'Hang on. You're putting more requirements on us. Where's the cash to help us deliver?' Mrs Goossens : They're saying they haven't got any more cash either. That's the trouble. Ms PENFOLD: Do they even acknowledge the problem they're creating for councils? Mrs Goossens : They must know. Ms PENFOLD: But they haven't acknowledged it? Mrs Goossens : They haven't acknowledged it. I don't believe they have. I think it's nearly like a slow burn. We had one example just last week with the EPA. There was illegal dumping going on at somebody's farm, and we spoke to the EPA in regard to that, and they said, 'You just sort it out.' It's not really our job to go and sort it out. I think a lot of things slowly become our responsibility without there necessarily being a big handover. It just creeps in, and then before we know it we're the ones left to address it. Ms PENFOLD: As we've noted in another hearing, there's no document or agreement between the three tiers of government over who's responsible for what. I assume you don't hear from state or even federal bureaucrats when there's legislation being proposed and you're going to be the implementer. Do you recall being consulted? Mayor Ruffell : Usually only after the legislation has been approved. You just deal with it. Ms PENFOLD: That must be something, at the very least, that you're consulted on so that there's an understanding of the financial impact on councils, if you're going to then be required to deliver on state or federal legislation. Ms Traeger : Yes. ESCOSA is a big one here in South Australia. Every council pays the same $40,000. For Robe—I'm not going to keep hammering it—that $40,000 is more than our financial assistance grant. Yet the City of Adelaide or City of Burnside still only pay $40,000. For us to be told what we already— Ms PENFOLD: So you've got to pay ESCOSA to do that? Mayor Ruffell : Yes. We have to pay $40,000— CHAIR: Yes, we heard that earlier. Mayor Ruffell : to be told that we're potentially financially unsustainable. Yes, we know that, but now your 40 grand has made us even worse. Mrs Goossens : And they'll come again. It's not a one-off. They're going to come again to review— Ms PENFOLD: It's a fee for service, but you don't get the reciprocal right for a fee for service if there's a national park that you can't rate or a state government or a federal government—you can't rate them, right? You can't apply a fee for service if you're a visitor economy area and you're servicing— Ms Traeger : Another little burr that I have around that is on the coast. Look at some of the activity that goes along the metro coast. I feel like I'm metro bashing here, but I don't mean to be. That is not funded by those councils—a lot of that dredging and a lot of that work that you see going on on those jetties. Because they've got a higher population, I think, from $52 million, $4 million goes to regions. Am I right there, Ian? Mr Hart : Something like that. We know the state government is spending $190 million over the next 20 years on metropolitan beaches, and we get zero. Ms PENFOLD: Wow. Ms Traeger : We find that really difficult. That's a hard one to swallow. Ms PENFOLD: I've got another question here, to Kingston and Robe, around coastal management. It goes to your submission around having a specific financial assistance grant to recognise coastal management. How would you design a formula that distinguishes genuine coastal disability from normal local amenity expenditure? Mr Hart : That's a great question. You've got to look at the risks. We know that rock walls, levee banks and dredging activity are keeping industry alive, particularly out of Robe and Cape Jaffa. There's a commercial fishing sector there, but if they don't have a working marina they're not operating and they're not creating export dollars and impact for both state and federal governments. We know that our coastline is changing. We know that there are real risks. We had a rock wall grant where, if we didn't get it, part of Marine Parade in Kingston would have been wiped out a few years ago and probably 50 or so houses would have had to retreat. That was a significant grant which we're very grateful for, but the gap that council had to fund was also significant. That's a burden on a small community of 2½ thousand people. Lots of other people come to enjoy it as well. I want to go back to one point. You're quite right; more than 30 per cent of our land is nonrateable for a variety of reasons. But, if we're going to give the vinegar, we've got to give the honey too. There are road programs like Roads to Recovery and the special local roads program that are good and help us. But, on the piece around paddock to market, freight and the forestry industry and what they contribute or should contribute, there are roads that they're accessing with multiple B-doubles, and we can't keep up with the impact of that. Ms PENFOLD: So you've got no capacity to charge a heavy vehicle fee or a road user charge? Mr Hart : No. Ms PENFOLD: You're just expected to maintain the roads. Mr Hart : Yes. Mrs Goossens : In the Tatiara, we have good roads. We invest a lot of money in our roads, and they're a high priority. We have received special roads grant funding, which we'd usually match—we would usually put in half of it. But, now that we do have good roads and because our roads are better than state roads, they now use our roads. Most transport would go on our roads. Therefore, they're using our roads, which we're going to have to maintain a lot more because they're not choosing to use state roads, because of the— Mr BURNELL: Aren't there restrictions under the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator on what types of vehicles can travel on what types of roads? If they're travelling down roads without an exemption in place, they're actually in breach of the law. Is that correct? Mrs Goossens : That is correct. But our roads are good enough— Mr BURNELL: Is that being enforced? Mrs Goossens : that some of them still could go on them. We would have exemptions. Mr BURNELL: It's not being enforced, so we've got an enforcement issue as well. Mrs Goossens : I think we're being forced to make the roads well enough and still get the permits so that they can go on them because there's a lot of grain and a lot of stock needing to be moved, so our local residents are expecting that quality of work. We have good roads and we have maintained them, but it's costing us, really, that they are choosing to go on our roads. We've got grapes, we've got stock, we've got sheep and we've got grain. A lot of our council roads are going to be used far more than the state roads. Mr BURNELL: For clarity, though, there is a very clear delineation between road train usage and normal heavy transport usage. We've got to be careful we don't blur those lines too broadly. Sorry, Deputy Chair. Ms PENFOLD: I'm more than happy to hand over. Mr BURNELL: I would like to go back to this ESCOSA piece. Is the $40,000 payment that's required for a report that's done once every four years, or is that a yearly ongoing fee? Mr Hart : Every four years—it's just invoiced at $10,000 per year. Mr BURNELL: It was a little bit confusing earlier that it was more than your financial assistance grant in any one year, so I want to seek clarification on that. Is that indexed, or is it just set at $40,000 for the four-year term and doesn't go up? Mr Hart : My understanding is it's just fixed. Ms Traeger : We have recently been asked to do a submission on the second tranche, which Robe did. We pointed that out as an issue for us in terms of not so much the indexation but— Mr BURNELL: But the actual cost. Ms Traeger : Yes. It should be equitable and based on something: population or— Mr BURNELL: It's disproportionate to the level of rates et cetera, yes. I think that that's a fair argument. But, on the financial assistance grant, everyone keeps coming to our hearings and telling us that it's 0.5 per cent and that we need it to double to one per cent. Robe council is receiving $35,000 a year from a financial assistance grant. Please don't tell me that doubling the grant pool—a $70,000 payment a year versus a $35,000 payment a year—without the methodology changing is going to make a world of difference. This is the problem I'm having with this whole discussion. I keep hearing, and I've heard it all the way across Australia, that we've got to double the financial assistance grant. The problem is, though, for a council like yours that is struggling with a $35,000 payment a year, what does that really mean in the way of difference of service delivery for you and your community? Ms Traeger : It doesn't mean anything, and that's why I haven't really made that a focus of my statement. Mr BURNELL: What I would prefer to have a discussion about is what in the methodology has to change, not what we would like to change, to ensure a better equity distribution so that councils like yours are not left to go broke? Because, essentially, what the financial assistance grant was designed to try and eliminate was councils getting left behind where they have got a reduced capacity to generate rate revenue. That's what I would like to hear. I'm interested in your feedback, Mr Hart, on this low-density population support payment or a methodology around that. That's what I'd like to extrapolate because I think that that is actually getting to the crux of the issue on sustainability for councils where there is very little capacity to go beyond the current rate revenue collection that these councils are afforded. Let's go for it. Mr Hart : Yes, a supplementary payment that's separate to the other formula—calculation—for low-density councils would be impactful and would mean that the rate increases we're passing on can perhaps be kept to a reasonable number. As I said before, we've got an older population who are on fixed incomes. If you're putting up your rates by seven or 12 per cent, or something like that, it's really hard for people who've got a cap in place, and it's got a lot harder. Where you're seeing the outcomes is in loss of amenity. Council is saying, 'We're not going to go broke, so we're unable to renew aged infrastructure,' and people are commenting on it. That affects wellbeing and all sorts of things as well. Ms Traeger : I'm not sure if I agree on the whole supplementary thing, but I think that, in part of the methodology, some sort of waiting on that density could be brought into place. Other than population, the thing that does impact roads are the fact that, because it is such a highly desirable tourism destination and only 40 per cent of our ratepayers live there, on paper we're deemed to be wealthy. Because a lot of second home owners are there. Some attention on the methodology about defining paper wealth and local government wealth needs to be worked into that methodology. I'm also very interested to see what it would look like if it were based on the number of rateable assessments. Some areas are not rateable; others are. But that doesn't move as much. Obviously, if you've got your Victor Harbour and you're a growth council, the number of rateable assessments will increase. If the methodology included rateable assessments, it would recognise that, whereas, in some of the lower growth areas, it would not. But that doesn't mean that it's not a more equitable way than population. Anyone can be anywhere on census night, and that's what's driving it. The two key things for Robe are the population and the perceived wealth due to the non-residential ratepayer base. Mr BURNELL: On this transient residential status, with census, you have to put down where your primary residence is if you're not staying in it. I want to make sure I've got this in my mind and that it's clear for Hansard. Are you implying that people are not declaring their residence in Robe as their primary residence, and they're somewhere else? Ms Traeger : Yes. Mr BURNELL: Of a transient nature, not the people who have got a holiday house. I'm talking about the people who might spend six or eight months of the year staying in Robe and then six months of the year up on the Sunshine Coast or vice versa. Ms Traeger : No, I'm talking about the ratepayers who use that as a second home. They won't list that. We have 60 per cent of those. CHAIR: Mr Venning. Mr VENNING: For clarity on that topic, the City of Brisbane has an operating budget of over $3 billion. They receive $50 million of federal assistance grants. If we doubled it, that would go to $100 million. It goes from 1.6 per cent to 3.2 per cent, whereas changing the model really helps small councils like ours. Jetties are something that coastal councils have to deal with. Jetties were handed from the state government to local government sometime in the past. How are your local governments dealing with the asset renewal of those jetties? Mr Hart : I'll try and be really brief. We—Kingston—lost our jetty in a terrible storm event last year. We had a 50-year lease with the state government for our jetty, which we were about halfway through. We're waiting for an insurance claim to be assessed by the state. I'm not hopeful that's going to come; I don't think they want to renew it, quite frankly. I won't pre-empt that, but we're waiting for an outcome. I expect they're going to make an offer of insurance payout that's going to be way below what it will cost to rebuild it. They may put some conditions on it that it becomes council's asset, which means that we have to depreciate it, manage it and maintain it, rather than it being a lease. They might just say, 'We're not renewing it.' I think they have that right under the lease because it's essentially been frustrated .Where does that leave our community? We want a new jetty; it's going to be $12 million. Whatever we get offered by the state towards it will be way insufficient, I suspect, for our community to even contemplate how they're going to finance it. Of course people want it. We have 80,000 visitors a year that are on it. It's loved. It's one of the few things we have. It's the pulse of our community. But I doubt that our community is going to be able to finance it. CHAIR: Was that under a disaster declaration or not? Mr Hart : No, it was just a terrible storm. It's 150 years old. It was end-of-life. We know that it was not fit for purpose and that if it were going to be rebuilt it would have to be raised a minimum of one metre, probably two. It is a bit like Whyalla's jetty that you probably know. It's going to be expensive. The state has 60-something jetties around the state under leases with councils. I look at York Peninsula who have 12, and I think they've been offered funding for three. It's like asking which children you are prepared to sacrifice. Every small community over there would be saying that theirs is important, too, because they have a lot of benefits not only for a local, small community but for the many visitors that come—just like the same for Robe. It's a real challenge. I've said it in our chamber, our community wants to drink champagne, but we've only got a budget for prosecco. People don't understand that we're not in a position to do what our metropolitan cousins can contemplate. Ms Traeger : Ours went in the same storm. We've got two jetties. One is joined to the land and the other part is not. There's a gap in the middle. It's the same deal. DIT have been procrastinating around the insurance. Along with Mr Hart, I suspect that we will be told that council will need to fork out a certain amount of money and they'll only cover a very small amount, and the argument will be that there hasn't been significant maintenance on there and some of the lack of maintenance contributed to the damage in the storm. But when you're really short on resources, sometimes those state government owned assets are the ones that are not going to receive the attention when you've got essential services that need council's resources. Mr VENNING: If you go from Kingston down to the Victorian border, which jetties are owned by the state? I'm guessing maybe at Beachport—that's probably the only one. Ms Traeger : Beachport, Port Mac— Mr Hart : Beachport. Cape Jaffa jetty is still considered a commercial jetty, even though it's not got commercial activity on it, but that is managed and maintained by the state government, as is Beachport. Mr VENNING: In terms of the auxiliary services that your councils provide that metro councils don't have to provide, such as childcare, how is that affecting the financial sustainability of your councils? Obviously there's huge community support for you providing those services. Ms Traeger : I'll probably start with that because we do run a childcare service. We have something in Robe where 50 per cent of the time we're sitting in an RSL and 50 per cent of the time we're sitting in kindy. So it's transit in and out, but we also have an outlying service to a neighbouring council at Wattle Range, which is at Beachport and Kangaroo Inn. We're targeting some funds from the state and the federal governments to build a new childcare centre, and we've got approval in principle to do that on the grounds of the Robe Community School. But for council to step into that space, we are looking at potentially disposing of some land assets. Even if we were to build an $8.2 million centre, which is quite modest really as it is a modular kind of system, just the depreciation on that thing alone over 50 years will be 160 grand which is three per cent of our ratepayer base. At the moment, we do deliver a cost neutral due to the funding that we receive plus the parent fees. But if we go down this path of a new build, under which we then will be responsible for all of those other overheads on a new facility, plus the obvious, the depreciation, we will be seriously having to look at how we will be able to deliver that. On top of child care, we do also have—I might have mentioned it when you weren't in the room, Mr Venning. Mr VENNING: Sorry. Ms Traeger : We own South Australia's only commercially operated marina, so we've got a very large commercial fishing hub in Robe. That runs at a quarter of a million dollar deficit. You may have seen in the news that we put up our boat ramp fees. Apparently, we're the highest daily rate in Australia at $30 a launch. But that netted council an extra seven grand based on the use for that. We also have a fully accredited VIC in the library, which is a dual service that's run out of there. We do provide a lot over and above those things that we're doing on a very small ratepayer base. The other key thing, which I didn't mention in my opening statement, is that we have 80 state and local heritage listed locations. It is very expensive to do any form of development. It's very complicated for the people that live in that town. So we're also paying for heritage advice and support for the privilege of having a very nice heritage fishing village. Mr VENNING: This hasn't come up today but certainly will come up tomorrow, I suspect. In terms of new developments, do your council areas and your proponents for new buildings, extensions et cetera have issues pertaining to native title? That's extinguished in the greater Adelaide area, which people don't actually appreciate. Ms Traeger : Absolutely. This is a very frustrating arrangement that's currently emerging a lot in Robe. Every walking trail and every project—anything on the coast—is becoming an issue with the native title not being extinguished. The ability to appropriately engage with First Nations people and their willingness to come to the table can be a bit of a barrier. It's not that we're not trying, but there is also the potential that we're going to have to enter into an Indigenous land use agreement, with the costs that will come with that, and there is no clarity—ours is the First Nations of the South East Claim #1, which has been ongoing for probably a decade or so. There is really no line in the sand as to when that will be finalised, so we're finding that every project that we're wanting to do is now being held up, because a lot of our land has not been extinguished for the purposes of native title. I'm not sure what you're experiencing. Mr Hart : Not so much for housing, but certainly for trails. We want to build a levee wall to protect our residents of an area called Rosetown, which was badly flooded last year, but there are complications because part of the alignment of the levee will encroach upon First Nations or cultural heritage land. The process to unravel all that is going to take a long time and potentially be very costly, and it holds the process up. We have native title claims along our foreshore, which means we can't develop it because we don't have any clarity. So there are those frustrations. Mrs Goossens : We had an incident in Bordertown, which is in Tatiara, where I'm the mayor. We purchased land alongside the hospital, and they had trees that had been planted there. It was not altogether a native vegetation problem. We bought that land, and it could only be used for medical reasons; we couldn't change that. So a doctors surgery was to be built there, but, by the time we got round to getting it approved—council weren't building it. Basically, we bought the land and got the title changed so that the land could be used for medical reasons. It went from community land to that. But, by the time we'd got to the stage where they had plans drawn up, the trees were 10 years older, and then to try and manoeuvre the build around the trees became just impossible. It was going to be quite a big medical centre. We're probably the exception in Bordertown. We do have, I think, seven or eight doctors in the town. This was going to be quite a big medical centre, privately funded by a doctor, where specialists could come in. But, in the end, native vegetation just became too difficult, because the trees had grown in that time. The bird flight affected everything, and in the end they walked away from it, and we're now left with a block of land that I think we paid $110,000 for but really is now not going to be able to be used for anything. It's not necessarily altogether native vegetation; it's the time factor and trying to get things happening fast enough. It can be frustrating. Mr VENNING: Thank you. CHAIR: We might end there. Thank you very much for your attendance here today. If you have been asked to provide any additional information, would you please forward it to the secretariat by 18 September 2026. You will be sent a copy of the transcript of your evidence and will have an opportunity to request corrections to transcription errors. Committee adjourned at 16:34