Council
23 May, 2025
Mayors show united front
SOUTH west Victorian councils have shown a united front to plea for the “unfair and inequitable” Emergency Services and Volunteers Fund (ESVF) to be scrapped.
Mayors from six western Victoria councils gathered at the Mortlake Country Fire Authority (CFA) station on Wednesday afternoon to stand against the state government’s new tax, which councils will be forced to collect.
The levy will see an additional $5.8 million in new tax dollars collected from Moyne Shire and $2.1 million from Warrnambool City.
Among the mayors in attendance were Cr Ben Blain (Warrnambool), Cr Karen Foster (Moyne), Cr Kate Makin (Corangamite Shire), Cr Jason Schram (Colac Otway), Cr Tanya Kehoe (Pyrenees Shire) and Cr Jo Armstrong (Ararat Rural City).
Two others, Southern Grampians Shire mayor Dennis Heslin and Glenelg Shire mayor Karen Stephens, were unable to attend but gave their full support to the campaign.
Western Victoria MP Bev McArthur also joined the councillors.
The councillors jointly called for the ESVF to be scrapped or at least reassessed, for communities to be assured the funding would be spend in the communities it was raised, and to shift levy collection responsibilities back to the State Government.
Cr Blain said emergency services were already underfunded in the south west, and feared the scope of the funding under the new levy would mean funds collected would not flow back to local volunteers.
“I’ve been a CFA volunteer for almost 20 years and it’s interesting – if you look at what happened with the Grampians bushfire, everyone was driving around in 30 to 40-year-old trucks,” he said.
“We want to see money flowing back in to the region.
“The funding is supposed to go back to volunteers to make sure they can protect their communities with the equipment they actually need.”
Moyne Shire Council mayor Cr Karen Foster said she was frustrated to be left with so many unanswered questions, acknowledging there was reason to believe the region would even see funding equivalent to what was lost in tax.
“We don’t know how it’s going to work, and all we can see is a big chunk of money being ripped out of our region, taken back to Spring Street and then we don’t know what happens after that,” she said.
“I think it’s really disrespectful to the people who give so much of their time, of themselves, to protect us.”
Cr Foster said she felt it was important to show communities in each local government area that their councillors had no intention of backing down quietly.
“The question we’re asking is if there’s any chance we can even repeal this – and to that I would say there always has to be hope,” she said.
“All of the mayors are standing shoulder-to-shoulder to show our communities we’re not going to give up, and we’ll keep fighting to the last breath.”
Moyne Shire Council will be among the hardest hit under the ESVF, facing a 117 per cent increase from the previous Fire Services Levy, with those owning agricultural land to be among the hardest hit.
Mrs McArthur said she had never seen “a coalition of agreement like this” occur in opposition to the tax.
“I will stand with every local government municipality who will bear the brunt of this totally unfair new tax,” she said.
“It’s a new property tax, not a levy, and not to fund emergency services, but to fund every other extraneous factor with no guarantee the money comes back to these communities.
“The Coalition has pledged to repeal this tax and will revert back to the previous Fire Services Levy as it was.
“Local government should not be the debt collectors for the state, and this puts them at the frontline for the distress this tax will bring.”
