As Predicted!
The "Forced" Shire Amalgamations started by Beattie and completed by Bligh, have as I predicted, resulted in an immediate issuing of new Re-Valuation Certicates, and guess what?... it appears that the Unimproved Rural Valuations have been INCREASED by 100%!(at least in our area of the Burnett!).....the usual annotations include: At the date of this valuation notice the Office of State Revenue will NOT have determined if Land Tax is payable based upon this vakuation.
Valuations will now be reassessed every year instead of 3 yearly, to help them get still more!
I resent having to pay Rates at all on land that I have bought and paid for by the way of hard work and sacrifice, for which I receive NOTHING in return in the way of services from the Local Authority.
It never fails to amaze me that this whole issue of Forced Shire Amalgamations (like the Traveston River Crossing Dam) was forced upon the residents of Queensland by this current despotic Queensland Labor Government,....."Government for the people?" .....will go down in history as did Pearl Harbour for America!
I reside on minimal mountainous grazing land which is suitable for nothing else ( except maybe breeding sand Goannas ) and have just weathered the worst drought in 11 years! Now I am being penalized again by these money-grabbing would be "masters of the world" and their warped versions of their Socialism!
I will as usual contest and protest these ludicrous Re-valuations knowing full well that my opinions count for nought, but it appears that there is little else that I can do to gain justice in this "Brave New Democracy" and now fully understand why John Howard manipulated the removal of guns from this Nation,....If this is truly Democracy then bring on World War 3.
Queenslanders are now being forced to pay for the "Inflationary Pressures" created by Beattie in his crazy scheme of inviting all the Southerners up to his "Paradise", forcing up house and land prices, thus creating a situation that is now becoming reminiscent of "Jonestown'!

I agree wholeheartedly with criticism of the forced amalgamations. I really don't see how we can expect to see monetary savings any time soon, given that the shires weren't permitted to sack staff, but have had to give out vastly inflated interim wages. Ultimately, part time councillors were reasonably cheap, but now we'll have expensive bureaucrats performing a lot more by way of delegated authority decisions.

In relation to the rates, I disagree. Everybody loves to trot out the line that they bought the land, it should be theirs, ad nauseum.

Put simply, we need rates as it's the revenue base for councils. Like it or not, councils are responsible for local services. They look after rubbish bins, roads, etc, and while they make a lot of cockups, occasionally they do a few other good initiatives as well.

No rates, means no profit and they can't work. If you're not getting any services from them, then that's an argument for reducing rates via means of differential rating, but not removing them altogether, as practically speaking, you'd have chaos as all citizens attempt to worm out of paying tax.

The vast increases, yes, I suppose that's worth looking at, but those are decided by the Department of Natural Resources and Mines, not the Councils.

The vast increases, yes, I suppose that's worth looking at, but those are decided by the Department of Natural Resources and Mines, not the Councils.
TRTL,
just as a matter of interest, the previous Qld Minister for DNR is now Minister for Qld Health. See the parallel ?