CARTER, Mr Damian, Chief Executive Officer, District Council of Streaky Bay TAYLOR, Mr Ben, Chief Executive Officer, District Council of Ceduna [09:26] CHAIR: 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 contempt of parliament. The evidence given today will be recorded by Hansard, attracts parliamentary privilege and is being broadcast live. I now invite you to make a brief opening statement before we proceed to discussion. Mr Carter : Chair and committee members, thank you for the opportunity to appear today on behalf of the District Council of Streaky Bay. If there is one message I would like the committee to take from our evidence, it is this: the sustainability challenge facing small remote councils is fundamentally a question of fiscal capacity. Streaky Bay raises approximately $4.5 million in general rates to support $138.7 million in listed assets. For every dollar we raise in general rates we have approximately $31 of assets to maintain, renew and manage. By comparison, for the city of Marion that figure is approximately $14. Ours are spread across 6,200 square kilometres, including 1,736 kilometres of road, more than 360 kilometres of coastline and 10 dispersed communities, and all of this more than 700 kilometres away from Adelaide. Our population increases from around 2,300 to more than 4,000 over the summer period. This is why residential population alone is an inadequate measure of expenditure need. There is also a mathematical limit to simply increasing rates. Our operating and capital grants total approximately $3.77 million, equivalent to 83 per cent of our general rate revenue. If that funding disappeared, we would have to bring our rates up by approximately 83 per cent, and that doesn't actually deliver a single additional project. Similarly, a $1 million grant contribution represents 22 per cent of Streaky Bay's annual general rates. For a metropolitan council, raising $100 million is just one per cent—same dollar contribution, but a completely different fiscal burden. Our argument is not simply that governments should provide more money. We also have an obligation to become more productive. That means greater regional collaboration, shared services and a better use of technology. We particularly see artificial intelligence as an opportunity to address specialised skills gaps facing small councils. AI will not replace professional judgement, but it can multiply the capability of a small workforce through better access to knowledge, analysis and automation. Efficiency matters, but efficiency cannot manufacture fiscal capacity, so our asks for the committee are practical. First, modernise financial assistance grants to better recognise asset burden, road length, remoteness and limited revenue capacity. Second, create a permanent, predictable local infrastructure allocation, similar in principle to the Roads to Recovery fund. Third, establish a small, regional house growth enabling program that provides targeted programs to small regional community councils to unlock housing development. Fourth, establish a genuine no-cost-shift principle, including whole-of-life funding for transferred responsibility and assets. Fifth, recognise councils in remote areas as essential partners in delivering essential regional services where's there's no viable provider that exists, without making local ratepayers the default funders of state or federal government responsibilities. The test we ask the committee to apply is simple: can a well-managed small council maintain essential infrastructure and services without unaffordable rates, deferred asset renewal or shifting broader government responsibilities onto local ratepayers? If the answer is no, the problem is not simply council efficiency; it is funding architecture. Mr Taylor : Chair and committee members, thank you for allowing me to present today. Next week marks 16 years for me at the District Council of Ceduna in various different financial roles. As part of my preamble, I wanted to include some comments I've received from the community in regard to council: 'Why don't you run more like a business instead of continuously increasing our council rates?' It's a fair comment. Over 15 years, council rates have increased by 43 per cent above inflation over that period of time, so people do feel the strain of those costs. They don't see the seven staff that I don't have now that I had 15 years ago. They don't see all the contractors who provide the services that they used to provide. They don't see the financial assistance grants that are produced by 20 per cent relative to inflation over those 15 years. They don't see that our infrastructure costs have gone from an infrastructure base of $48 million 10 years ago to $203 million from the 2025 financial year. All they see are rates. What I want to present is the whole picture: how, as an organisation, we've been trying to balance our budget, yet ESCOSA have now deemed our council unsustainable. Along with that, we get: 'Why don't you just go and chase more grants?' That's easier said than done. Local roads and community infrastructure funding and roads to recovery funding are very good grants that provide councils the ability to deal with projects of high importance. With competitive grants, you're competing against most councils in Australia for very small amounts of money for mainly new or upgraded assets. Again, another new or upgraded asset means another asset on your books and more costs in the future. The challenges that we face in remote areas—and the District Council of Ceduna is the second most remote council in South Australia, as well as the westernmost council in South Australia—are becoming harder and harder. Attraction and retention of staff is difficult. I have, since I've been CEO, lost two key managers, and I haven't been able to replace both of them because of the challenges of housing, competing against other markets and other factors as well—mainly how I balance my budget. With all of that, we then have the future unknowns. We have the unknowns in regard to further state government policy decisions. We've already been dealing with cost cutting. We've been dealing with cost shifting. We're dealing with additional compliance as a result of legislation. In the future, are we going to have to deal with rate capping in South Australia? We just don't know. There's also climate change. I've gone from having the driest year on record in Ceduna, two years ago, with some properties receiving less than a hundred millimetres of rain, to properties having 260 millimetres of rain in less than 24 hours this year. So I've gone from drought to flood. With all of this, there's also 250 kilometres of coastline across five towns, and I'm dealing with the impacts of that. So they're just some of the challenges that I've faced in my 15 years and will continue to face in the future. I'm happy to take any questions from the committee in regard to these matters moving forwards. CHAIR: Great. Thank you very much. This is probably a question for both witnesses. From your perspective, what are the main pressures affecting your council's financial sustainability? Which responsibilities are becoming harder to fund within the current revenue base? Mr Taylor : I think one of the biggest challenges is actually cost of compliance with legislation change. I have gone through and estimated that at least 20 per cent of council's operating budget is now spent on legislative compliance, state or federal government compliance. As a member of the community, I'd want to see my money being spent on things in the community rather than effectively just ticking a box for someone living in Adelaide or Canberra. That is one of the single biggest things that I've seen over my time in local government, and that has become the biggest challenge moving forward for our limited revenue base. Mr Carter : For me, it's probably the lack of a state or federal government presence in our communities. In 2016 our long-established GP retired from our community, and no one was able to take over that GP's services. To put it in perspective, Streaky Bay doesn't have a declining population; we grow at around one per cent per year and, as I said, we also double our population in there. So there was no real rationale for the withdrawal of those services. Council had to step forward and take over those services. It cost council probably, up until this point, around $2.5 million in intervening in those GP services. We then basically moved on to transition to a community based board, and we've had to provide numerous assistance to that community based board, not only around advocacy. I sit on that board, basically as an observer, and give them a lot of governance advice and that type of thing. I've got another key staff member who actually sits on there as a board member, and I allow her a lot of time during work time to help that board. This is a cost impost that other communities, particularly your metro communities, don't actually have. It's just one example; there have been many other things. We've had to step in and take over the responsibility because there is very little state and federal representation. Mr. Venning is an amazing MP and gets around, but the seat of Grey is large—it's huge. So, when there's an issue, many people come to council even though it may fall out of council's remit. CHAIR: What percentage of your operating revenue is the financial assistance grants? Mr Taylor : It now represents approximately 20 per cent of council's budget. It was 25 per cent when I first commenced. Mr Carter : As I was saying earlier, it's around $3.77 million, which is equivalent to 83 per cent of our general rate revenue. CHAIR: Thank you. Mr Venning. Mr VENNING: Thank you both for coming down to Lincoln today and providing evidence. It's a long drive for both of you. We've talked a lot about how costs are disproportionate for councils like yours—governance and compliance, workforce attraction, capital works, grant writing et cetera. But I want to shift the conversation to issues that are specific to your two councils, for awareness for this committee. There's the cost burden that your councils have as opposed to other regional councils or, indeed, metropolitan councils: water and lack thereof—you're at the end of the line when it comes to the Morgan-Whyalla pipeline—and native title and the costs that that poses for new developments. And then secondly—and this is more so for Ceduna—there are the costs of dealing with antisocial behaviour from citizens that aren't necessarily from your LGA. Mr Taylor : The District Council of Ceduna's boundary finishes 440 kilometres east of the Western Australian and South Australian border. There are no councils west of Ceduna. We are a service hub for those communities to our west, including for communities in Western Australia as well. With that we have at any one point in time, potentially 1,000 to 1,500 more people within our community than what our population data shows. We have numerous communities including the Yalata community and Oak Valley community in South Australia and even Tjuntjuntjara which is in Western Australia. Those indigenous communities come down into Ceduna for health services, general social services and things like that. The member for Grey is fully aware that council was part of the federal government's cashless debit card trial for many years because of the antisocial behaviour that we deal with. As a dollar figure the council used to spend nearly $500,000 a year dealing with antisocial behaviour issues in our council area. That's a significant amount considering that we probably had about a $10 million operating budget at that point in time. We now, as a council, are probably spending nearly $250,000 a year on antisocial behaviour issues. As an example, we're currently seeking grant funding for nearly $500,000 to appoint special positions just to actually deal with people from communities when they are in Ceduna so that we can try to reduce the antisocial behaviour and, quite frankly, the negative perception in the media of what is a beautiful town. So that's the antisocial side of things From a water perspective, as an example, Ceduna is one of the very rare councils in South Australia that actually has potable water. A state government policy decision in the early 1990s removed cost efficiencies to provide water west of Ceduna, because Ceduna is where SAWater's mains finish. What did council do? Council went and built 90 kilometres of mains pipeline to provide water to three Aboriginal communities and two towns, including communities outside of our council area. It's all well and good when it costs $4 million to build, but it now costs me $30 million to replace, and the cost of water is now getting higher and higher and higher. I have been working with the state government since 2014 to have the state government return these assets to SAWater. Every single time there is a new state government it gets rejected every time. These are the challenges that we face. Mind you, in saying that we're extremely happy to actually still have access to potable water because, without that, our region simply wouldn't be liveable. Native title was the final question from the member for Grey. Mr Carter might have a different view, but Ceduna Council's native title arrangements were determined in 2013. We do have a good working relationship with the current native title board. Whilst there were difficulties over, say, the first five years in working with the native title board, we are actually forming a very strong relationship and collectively working together to try to push regional issues to both state and federal government. Mr Carter : Water is an important one for us as well. It's an important one where the state government has failed us. Up until about 2004, we received our potable water from a basin called Robinson Basin. That was becoming extremely stressed with the water being taken out of there. So the state government embarked on a number of sustainability inquiries around Streaky Bay's water supply, and they came up with a solution of building a pipeline from the township of Poochera. It connected us into the SAWater potable water system, but they built it at 20 millimetres. The actual rationale for that was that they were going to shandy the water with Robinson Basin, and that would keep us to capacity until 2016. It is now 2026, and they have never shandied that water with Robinson Basin. We have water meters in the township of Streaky Bay, which people will build a new dwelling on. SA water will deny them an allocation to be able to connect in there, because they just simply don't have enough water—any property outside of an infinite boundary of Streaky Bay as a township, which is very, very defined. Most new population development—they aren't allowed to collect potable water. They have to build enough water capacity to capture 60,000 litres of water, which means all of our properties are quite large, and that impacts everything. It impacts maintaining roads, because you've got more residential roads to maintain. Picking bins up—instead of in a metro area, where you go five metres to pick each bin up, you're going 150 metres up the road to pick up each bin. It's even in regard to operations. We installed a standpipe in Streaky Bay this year. One of the conditions of us installing a standpipe was that we had to hand back one of our water hydrants, so we've only got one water hydrant to tap into to get water to maintain our road construction and maintenance activities. We've gone to the state government on numerous occasions highlighting this issue and highlighting our desperate need for water. We're developing at one per cent. The reality is that we're potentially having to do an industrial estate development nearer rather than later. We've exhausted all of our industrial land, and we've got no potable water. The state government doesn't care. They only care about the greater Adelaide region, and that's the reality of it. Native title—I'll be honest, but I say this with all love for our three native title groups. A determination within the District Council of Streaky Bay has just been recent. With that, our relationship has just started. We're just developing that relationship, and we're starting to work towards that relationship and work well. But the reality of the situation is that native title means those native title groups have rights over those lands. Those rights may be economic rights. That means that part of something that council may have received funds for previously now goes to that native title group. That also means—and it's probably my biggest concern with it, because as I say, on a personal basis, I love our native title group and all the rest of it. But, as soon as you get lawyers involved in developing ILUAs and all the rest of it, that's another cost impost onto council, and we don't have the internal capabilities to work through those ILUAs. We have to engage a lawyer to go through it. That's just the reality. As I say, I think what our native title group and our council is working towards is a really, really positive thing, and we're working towards that. But we also have to be realistic about those cost imposts that native title brings onto our council. Those cost imposts affect regional councils far more than metro councils because you look at the way native title land has been extinguished. Mr VENNING: This is more so a decision of state government, but I would like this committee to address it at some point. What is your view on council amalgamations in relation to the to the inquiry today? Mr Carter : I'll probably bring up this comparison straight off the bat. If you were to look at Streaky Bay, Wudinna and Elliston and amalgamate us as three council areas, it would probably be, some people would say, a natural progression. That would give us a road network of 4,474 kilometres. That's longer than the driving distance from Sydney to Perth. The reality is that, when you look at amalgamation—particularly in regional and remote areas—it doesn't increase household incomes, it doesn't create rateable properties, it doesn't shorten roads, it doesn't remove infrastructure, it doesn't eliminate freight costs and it doesn't remove renewable backlogs. In many regards, if you amalgamate two financially weak councils, all you're doing is creating one larger financially weak council. Amalgamation will never overcome that tyranny of distance, and that's even without talking about getting rid of local decision-making or the effects that it may have on certain townships in regard to that workforce now no longer being there. That's another decline of those townships as well. When I've looked at it—and when I look at our road network, what we have to maintain and how we'd deliver services to a larger, broader area—there have been councils I've worked at in the Northern Territory larger than the state of Victoria. When you start to look at that tyranny of distance, amalgamation just simply doesn't work. Mr Taylor : I'm a bit disappointed you didn't include Ceduna in your comparison there! We only have one neighbour, and that's the District Council of Streaky Bay. So I guess amalgamations are something that are always going to be spoken about. By my comparison, with Ceduna and Streaky Bay combined, our road network is the equivalent of travelling from Brisbane to Melbourne and back. So it is a challenge potentially moving forward for both of our councils. We have spoken about amalgamations previously, and Ceduna and Streaky Bay couldn't be much more different if you tried, in terms of the social and political aspects of both the councils. With that would then come significant issues of prioritisation. What becomes a priority of a merged council? I've presented to all of my peers at the EPLGA on how different, probably, Ceduna is to most of the other councils on the Eyre Peninsula. As an example, we have half the farmers that most other country councils on the Eyre Peninsula have. We have a lot more people within our township of Ceduna. Ceduna and Koonibba are both within the bottom 20 per cent of the SEIFA index in Australia. So we have those social and economic issues as well. At the same time, if the state government are going to make a decision, they're going to make a decision, with probably little consultation with councils on this matter. I don't think it would work. I've seen other states where amalgamations have occurred and then de-amalgamations have occurred afterwards. Will it bring cost savings? I don't think it will. All it's going to do is basically remove some CEO positions and then probably result in an additional tier of management because there's still going to be the demand for the same level of service that has been provided within the same communities as has been for all those years. Mr Carter : I am just adding one more thing with regard to managing all our work and all the rest of it. On an average fortnight, I work around about 110 to 120 hours. I often do a full shift on a Sunday. When I do that full shift on a Sunday, I'm not alone in that office; I've got general managers working with me. We are lucky we have got a whole executive team that absolutely love their community and will go above and beyond for their community. But many would say they go too far—spending a Sunday working, going those extra miles for their community—and that's just not sustainable. So, when you're looking at amalgamation, you're going to lose those officers that do that amount of work. When you're in a small remote council, you go above and beyond. I've cleaned toilets. I've emptied bins. I've mowed lawns. That's the reality of being in a small regional council. CHAIR: Thank you. I might go to Mr. Burnell. Mr BURNELL: I'm interested to understand the level of collaboration across councils. Do you run shared services like road crews for road maintenance or the like? Have you got any examples of where you are collaborating with local councils nearby? Mr Carter : We've started working on that. We've started conversations across the whole of the western EP. That's Streaky Bay, Ceduna, Elliston and Wudinna. Particularly Elliston, Wudinna and Streaky Bay have started working collaboratively a lot more. We've gone out onto joint tender for road-sealing contracts. That allows us to share the mobilisation costs—because one of the significant things that we have is a mobilisation cost of anywhere between $5,000 and $10,000. This year, we employed a Wudinna staff member to raise rubble for us, and we're actually looking at that further. We've had numerous conversations amongst all four councils, and we're looking at that as well. We're looking to see how we can collaborate a lot more as well. Mr Taylor : Yes. Over the years, collaboration or attempted collaboration has occurred, whether that be joint procurement processes or staff sharing, as an example. We engaged the services of Streaky Bay council for four years to have their planner work with our council. With the District Council of Wudinna—we engaged their environmental health officers for nearly seven years in arrangements like that. This is because we can't all employ that one person and, at the same time, the workload of that person in a council isn't a full-time role. With regard to road crews and things like that, in our council our crew is basically designed to work on council's workload all year round, on bitumen resealing and things like that. Yes, joint procurement has occurred in the past, and we have seen the benefits of it. I understand the need for collaboration. As a result, one of the decisions my council has made in the last 12 months has been that we've actually moved away from the electronic business system that our council has used for over 20 years to migrate to the same system that, I think, eight of the 11 councils on the Eyre Peninsula are now using. Obviously, my staff were not happy with that decision, but, in consultation with them, it's about the future and us having the ability to support another council if they've got staff away or vice versa. If we need help in the future, we could potentially call upon a neighbouring council to have someone that's experienced in that to actually come in and fill that void. It's looking at those different things as part of the collaboration. There have been many attempts over the entire Eyre Peninsula to collaborate on major projects. I think what we're now finding is that, with smaller collaborations between four to five councils, we are getting more achievable outcomes. Mr BURNELL: On the ESCOSA piece, you heard me ask the question of the previous panel. I'm keen to get your feedback and thoughts on how it works, what can be done to improve it and the benefits or drawbacks that you see from it. Mr Carter : Look, I really like the transparency of it. I like the fact that I have another document that I can rely on to have hard discussions with our community as well as council. If I were to be a critic of it, I didn't like how it was formatted. It came with the words 'sustainable', 'unsustainable', 'mostly sustainable'—whatever that purpose is. I'd never go home and tell my wife I was 'mostly faithful', but that's another story. What would happen then is the media would just pick up on those one or two words and then sensationalise what's actually occurring. I probably saw that firsthand with the District Council of Ceduna, and I know Ben will speak a lot more about that. Then there's the cost—Mayor Quigley spoke about it as well. It's $40,000. That's equivalent to a one per cent rate rise within Streaky Bay. That's a lot of money. It is a case of, 'Would I get better bang for buck if I got a consultancy firm like KPMG or someone else like that to come in and do the same level of analysis?' As everyone has said, across the sector, it is nothing that we don't know. But, at the same time, it was great. I can't speak highly enough of the staff, the way we worked with the staff and all the rest of it. I think, ultimately, it gives a level of transparency, which is of great value to our ratepayers. Mr BURNELL: Just for clarification, is the equivalency of a one per cent rate rise in one year or spread over four years? Mr Carter : That would be in one year. So, if we had a one per cent rate rise— Mr BURNELL: So a $10,000— Mr Carter : it would be equivalent to around $40,000, so we functionally had to increase our rates by one per cent to pay for the ESCOSA report. Mr BURNELL: But the ESCOSA charge is $40,000 over four years—correct? Mr Carter : Over four years—exactly. Mr BURNELL: So a $10,000 increase— Mr Carter : That would equate to a quarter of a percent of a rate rise each. CHAIR: Deputy Chair? Ms PENFOLD: Does Mr Taylor want to answer this part? CHAIR: Sorry, yes. Mr Taylor : I much prefer the ESCOSA process than the alternative, which was, potentially, rate capping in South Australia. I think that would have had a far more negative impact on all councils. I'll start off with that. My next response is that the ESCOSA report, for Ceduna, was not very nice. As a new CEO at that time and having been in the council for a long period of time, there were a lot of questions asked about me, like, 'Well, do you know what you're doing?' To have ESCOSA say, 'You should shut your airport because it's unsustainable'—that's easy for an accountant to say. But, when you're 800 kilometres away from Adelaide, when there's the Royal Flying Doctor Service and the military—it's because the aerodrome is basically halfway between Sydney and Perth. It is a strategic transcontinental runway from a government perspective. But when ESCOSA say, 'It's unsustainable. You should shut it down and cut your losses,' they didn't go in and listen to the story about how we've suffered for five years because of Regional Express's reduction, because Regional Express is our only commercial airline provider. We tried to find alternative providers. We could not provide an alternative provider, so we have to deal with the lower volume of flights and therefore the significant loss of revenue. It was very hurtful. As I've said to people in the community, it very much looked at the financial perspective but not the social benefit perspective. It's the same thing, as the member for Grey spoke about earlier, as the water scheme that council runs as a significant operating loss. The fact of the matter is that, if I increase the price of water, people aren't going to use it, and I'm then going to lose even more money. I've been trying for over 10 years to get the state government to take it over, to no avail. The ESCOSA report was quite damning of our council, but it looked at things from a pure dollars-and-cents perspective; it didn't look at the social benefit of loss-providing services to the council and basically, as a level of government, what the community's expectations and wants are for these sorts of services. It is a great document, though, for me. I'm going to have a 75 per cent turnover of elected members at the next local government election, so it is a good document for my new council councillors to look at to see where we stand and also the work we're now doing to obviously improve upon that. But as I pointed out in my preamble, we have been cutting costs every year over 15 years. We have been losing funding from the financial assistance grants over 15 years. We can keep increasing rates, but how much more can we keep increasing rates by to make ourselves sustainable? CHAIR: Deputy Chair. Ms PENFOLD: Thank you very much for appearing today. I appreciate it's a long drive to be here, so it's wonderful to have this opportunity. Mr Carter, particularly in your opening comments you talked about funding assets on a life cycle basis. Could you perhaps give some more information to the committee about just how that could be costed—how the federal government or the state government could provide funding for full life cycle costs on an asset that might be for 40 years? Mr Carter : It's been spoken about previously, and I've raised it here: having a permanent, predictable local infrastructure allocation. I'll use the example of a playground in a small regional town. Some of our inland towns have got declining populations. They've got playgrounds which will come to end of life, and then we have to renew them. If I was purely to sit there and run council like a business, I would say, 'Declining population—we need to remove that playground.' But that goes against all those kids still within that community having access to a playground. Being able to tap into a fund from the federal government to help us with our asset renewals would be highly valuable. Apart from roads, where we tap quite significantly into the Roads to Recovery fund to maintain our road network and assets, in terms of our assets and their management and maintenance of them I think the responsibility falls on councils for having strong asset management processes in place but then also communicating to the community about that. The fact that we have to depreciate our assets in our books as well means we're always considering those costs of maintaining and all the rest of it. But particularly when we come to asset renewals, that's where we really need the assistance. Probably the prime example across the EP, which is not an example that we have done, because all of our jetties are in a good condition—mind you, we tapped into the LCRI program to put money into renewing our Haslam jetty—is jetties. All these jetties are getting to end of life, and councils don't have the funds to renew these assets, because coastal infrastructure, particularly in the face of climate change, is quite expensive to maintain. I replaced a footbridge which went across one of our salt swamps, which obviously gets submerged by water. We had to use composite materials and stuff like that. When that was built, that would have cost council a couple of thousand dollars and a little bit of local know-how, because they were using treated pine and all the rest. But now we have to consider the environmental sensitivities of that swampland and we also have to have sustainable infrastructure, that project costs us $150,000 for a 25-metre footbridge. That's not even looking at some of our existing boardwalks, all those types of assets we have to maintain and then also the increase with regard to having them safe, disability access and all those things we have to consider as well. Ms PENFOLD: Mr Taylor, do you have any comments? Mr Taylor : A lot of council assets are very long life—25, 30, 40, 50 years; underground infrastructure, 100 years plus. As I said in my preamble, the cost of infrastructure for us has probably increased by a factor of four over the last 15 years. I think the items built 15, 20 years ago when I was a boy living in Ceduna are now getting to the point where they have to be replaced. As I tell people, there's been very little consideration for the significant cost increase. We may not be able to replace those things. 'You have to.' That's all well and good, but it doesn't cost us $50 now to replace a metre of footpath. That now costs $200 to replace a metre of footpath and so on. $25,000 for a kilometre of road is now $75,000 for that same section of road. That is the impact on councils, and we are definitely feeling that as a result. The ESCOSA report highlights the importance of asset management planning. That's all well and good, but when you have significant increases as a result of inflationary pressures, fewer organisations that can actually do it and obviously supply issues and things, that would then drive your costs up. They are factors where councils of our ilk just can't fund those significant increases, even though the community expectation is that those assets and infrastructure are still there in the future. Ms PENFOLD: I go back to: how do you fund whole of life cycle? We've got a lot of assets. In my area we had a lot of money spent. I've got a big electorate—not the size of Tom's, but certainly I've got a lot of pools, a lot of towns, and they all want, like you, the same things kept. How do we as a federation fund just to maintain existing assets? We're talking a very large number across the country. What do you see as solutions to this? Mr Carter : You're ultimately right. We are having that scenario, and already as a council we're doing the best we possibly can. We're having some hard conversations with some of our community members around their aspirations. But then also at the same time we're having to make decisions where we may need a critical bit of infrastructure but we're deliberately delaying that because we know we have to take on the maintenance of that thing but then we have to depreciate that as well, and that will ultimately affect our operating balance at the end of the year and possibly put us into a deficit and those types of things. They're the things the community can't understand. They see, let's just say, a 4.5 per cent rate rise, and they think that's an extraordinary amount of money. I've spoken about one per cent being equivalent to $40,000. That's not an extraordinary amount of money. The big thing for us from a regional perspective and particularly from a remote retrospective is that the state as well as the federal government need to acknowledge that and understand that. I draw the analogy. We talked about the amount of road length that goes through all of our district councils. The reality is that's vital road infrastructure for obviously agriculture, aquaculture and—particularly emerging across the western EP—mining as well. These are all things that go into our national bottom line through GDP output. But at the same time you're expecting local government to facilitate the infrastructure for that. That has to change, and that perception has to change. We do need the support there because we will have to make the hard decisions. This year someone spoke about the amount of rain and all the rest of it. Our roads got smashed, particularly our unsealed road network, because we're not normally used to that amount of rain. What do we do? Do we start to close some of our unused roads during high-level rainfall to protect the assets? I'm sure that's a thing the grain producers would absolutely fight against if we had to do it. But these are the decisions we don't want to make and nor should we make. Mr Taylor : The Drought Communities Program, Local Roads and Community Infrastructure Program and Regional Airstrip Upgrade Program are all programs that we have been fortunate in receiving funding for. Without those funds that could be used to replace our existing infrastructure base, most of that infrastructure wouldn't have been replaced. Most competitive grants, new or upgraded, if there was an allocation provided in the future, were purely for existing infrastructure so that it could be replaced. For our remote regions, it's all about liveability. If we don't have the things that you can get closer to Adelaide, people would much rather live there than where they do out in remote parts of Australia. I think, if you're talking about cost, it's about potentially having some form of funding allocation that is not for new or upgraded assets for organisations but is actually to replace existing infrastructure within remote regions so that those areas can still be considered liveable into the future. Ms PENFOLD: If we look at financial assistance grants, even getting that to one per cent is not going to address your asset renewal backlog. We are talking somehow potentially about some other pool that is untied but specifically enables you, not for bright, new, shiny things, but just to do—is that it? The use of your untied grants is largely not going to be for asset renewal, is it? It's operational. Mr Carter : You're absolutely right there. When we look at the competitive grants program—and it's been spoken about previously—you look at the resource allocation you need to compete for those grant programs. You need to create the business case. You need to create the designs. The sum of $250,000 is a large expenditure for a small remote council, and that's where we need to go just to go for the competitive grant program. Then we may not actually even get that grant program. In many regards, you're chasing a fairies-in-the-garden-type thing when you're going for that. We desperately need uncompetitive grants, particularly for asset renewals. The Roads to Recovery Program is a perfect example of a great program. We actually report back to the federal government about what road assets we're renewing, and then they're able to put their name to it and see that they're getting value for money. We could expand that into other infrastructure. I know you say bright, sparkly, new things, but playground renewals are needed. You look at the OHS requirements around playground inspections. You have to do a weekly inspection. You have to get an independent person to come through and do a two-yearly inspection. They're all actually saying that you have to actually replace these playgrounds along there. In regard to antisocial behaviour, we don't have the same issues as the District Council of Ceduna, but we still have some antisocial behaviour. A lot of antisocial behaviour happens around your youth facilities. That's the reality of it. More untied funding to actually help us renew those assets would be just a dramatic thing. If that's the one thing that we can get out of this, that's a positive and an absolute win for us. CHAIR: Thank you very much for your attendance here today and driving such a long way to be here. It's been really, really valuable for us. If you've been asked to provide any additional information, would you please forward it to the secretariat by 18 of 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. Proceedings suspended from 10:13 to 10:19 .