Councils call for cash

THE Interface Councils group, which includes Casey, said the Government needs to take care of councils which don’t have proper infrastructure before they allocate the funds elsewhere.
The group has slammed the Regional Cities Victoria Report that asks the Government for $4.4 billion for future infrastructure and services provision, stating that the focus should be on bridging the infrastructure and services gap in areas where growth has already occurred, not on areas where it may occur in the future.
The Interface Councils have asked the Government for an annual $30 million growth fund to provide much needed community infrastructure for existing residents.
Cr Brett Owen, Mayor of Cardinia Shire, which is one of the Interface councils, said the group thought the Government needed to take care of the residents who don’t have the infrastructure before they start allocating more funds to areas that are already well positioned to handle growth with the existing population.
“Without significant investment in the Interface areas, Victoria is at risk becoming a two tiered state.
“Areas that have infrastructure and services like the regional cities and metropolitan Melbourne and areas that don’t, such as the interface areas,” Cr Owen said.
Cr Owen said many of the Interface areas have experienced significant growth during the past 10 years and the provision of infrastructure has not kept up with demand.
“By comparison, many of Victoria’s regional cities have not experienced significant growth and the figures show that in the last 10 years some of the 10 regional cities have grown less than the Victorian average,” said Cr Owen.
“The regional cities have access to a $1 billion regional growth area fund.
“The State Government has excluded the Interface Councils from this fund (with the exception of Mitchell) although almost 90 per cent of the land in the Interface area is rural.
“The State Government allocated 44 per cent of the state’s capital funding to the regional areas yet these areas only accounted for 10 per cent of the population growth.
“By comparison, Interface areas received 18 per cent of the capital funding and accounted for almost 50 per cent of the state’s growth.”
Cr Owen said that if action was not taken to bridge the inequity in infrastructure and service provision, the situation would continue to decline and become a much more expensive problem for the Government.