The Municipal Association of Victoria (MAV) is demanding that the state government be more open about where income collected from landfill levies is going.
MAV President Cr Bill McArthur said the government had failed to deliver on its promise to use the landfill levy to transform how Victorians manage waste.
According to MAV, councils and landfill operators are due to collect almost $175 million in landfill levies this year, yet the Victorian Government has yet to spend much of the money collected in previous years.
Cr McArthur said councils are “fed up” with this hidden state tax and they have voted to seek greater accountability and transparency around this revenue and how it is being spent.
“With almost half a billion dollars of accrued landfill levies sitting in the Sustainability Fund, the question is whether the state is using the funds to dress up its bottom line,” said Cr McArthur.
Councils pay the landfill levy on each tonne of municipal waste received. They collect these payments from ratepayers through charges for kerbside collection services and gate fees at landfills/transfer stations.
The fees help to fund key state agencies, such as Sustainability Victoria and the Environment Protection Authority, as well as metropolitan and regional waste management groups. Remaining income is paid into the Sustainability Fund, established in 2010, to be reinvested in projects that sustainably use resources, improve waste management and community action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“Landfill levies impose a substantial cost burden on ratepayers and those depositing waste at landfills. There was no delay in striking higher levies, but councils are frustrated that reinvestment has stalled,” asserted Cr McArthur.
Victorians have witnessed high state landfill levy increases of up to 233 per cent (2010/11), 47 per cent (2011/12), 10 per cent (2012/13), 10 per cent (2013/14) and 10 per cent (2014/15). For the current financial year, they were set at 3.5 per cent growth.
“Landfill levies paid into the Sustainability Fund are not fulfilling their intended purpose and it remains unclear why the Fund is holding onto $430.7 million in unspent money.
“The government has repeatedly said communities expect absolute transparency in council budgets and spending. They must now practise what they preach and release an annual statement that reports on the balance and expenditure of the Sustainability Fund,” he added.
MAV is now calling on the government to release its draft Priority Statement for the Sustainability Fund, which was due out in August. It wants to see money from the fund allocated to support councils and waste and resource recovery groups to cut waste going to landfill.
“In line with a 2014 Auditor General’s report, some of the money should also be prioritised for assisting in the rehabilitation of closed landfill sites, particularly in rural and regional Victoria,” concluded Cr McArthur.