City pushes for more pay

By SHAUN INGUANZO
KNOX City Council has thrown its support behind a campaign to increase Victorian councillor allowances aimed at encouraging more people into local government.
The Victorian Local Government Association’s (VLGA) document What Price Democracy? highlights councillor remuneration as a barrier for people who wish to run for council but can not justify to commit the time for an average $15,000 allowance.
Knox City Council carried a motion to support the VLGA campaign at last week’s ordinary meeting of council.
VLGA chief executive Andrew Rowe said the document was not aimed at giving councillors a pay rise, but to push the State Government or Opposition to independently review the current structure of councillor allowances to encourage a diverse range of representatives in local government.
Mr Rowe said the VLGA was concerned that not everyone could afford to be a councillor, a job which he said could require up to 30 or 40 hours of input a week.
“If you look around the state, males over 50, who are superannuated and semiretired form a majority of elected representatives.
“While we value their work immensely, I think the community will benefit from diversity.”
But Mr Rowe said one of the barriers to this participation was the current councillor allowance, which for Knox City councillors stands at just over $15,000 per year, and three times that for its mayor.
He said the VLGA was hoping for an increase in allowances paid to councillors and mayors.
“We would expect and hope that a review would come out saying that, but we are also open to the fact that a full independent review might not say that,” he said.
“What we want is process.”
According to Mr Rowe, this would involve making local government allowances fairer by removing what he labelled an ‘absurd’ tiered pay structure, which sees bigger municipalities pay their councillors more money.
“It assumes that rural councils do a lot less work, but evidence suggests this is not the case.”
Knox mayor Jenny Moore said the council did not support the document for an increase to councillor pay, but rather it believed a ‘mechanism’ was required to ensure councillor remuneration was ‘fair across all of Victoria’.