Inquiry into Local Government funding and services

Rates and revenue reform

• Abolish the local government rate cap.
• Shift council rates from capital-improved value to land value.
• Realign revenue from state government initiatives such as the Development Facilitation Program (DFP) to reduce adversarial relationships between state and local government bodies.

Better economic tools for local government

• Provide best-practice policy assessment frameworks that outline common considerations and how to measure them consistently across councils.
• Amend the Local Government Act 2020 to require cost-benefit analyses for significant proposed policy and rule changes.
• Create a “public consultancy” within the State Government to assist local councils with strategic work.
• Implement internal tender-first provisions and prohibit the acceptance by councils of “free lunches” from private consultancy firms.

‍Toward metropolitan governance‍

• Amalgamate all Greater Melbourne councils into a metropolitan-wide government in the style of that seen in Auckland, Brisbane and London.
• Implement a local board structure to allow local-level decision-making to remain intact.
• Roll back the 2018 shift towards single-member wards and reinstate multi-member wards.