22 April

This happened in Lithgow recently. The investigation as to why turned up the interesting fact that nobody even knew how the Lithgow reticulated water supply works. They still don’t, some of it is still a mystery. The basic infrastructure of the town is not even understood, let alone maintained properly. In Australia, the overwhelming majority of tax dollars go to the federal government, much less to State governments and tiny amounts to local governments. Vertical fiscal imbalance, the economists call it. It’s backwards, the levels of government which actually provide the services we want are starved of funds. Why most local councils are also forced to raise rates all the time.