General News
11 June, 2025
Ahh but ... tax hike spectre remains
Premier buys time to temper rural backlash, writes Chris Earl THE fire is not yet under control. That’s the message from rural Victoria to Premier Jacinta Allan after her “masterstroke” Friday announcement that farmers would be spared the 150...
Premier buys time to temperrural backlash, writes Chris Earl
THE fire is not yet under control. That’s the message from rural Victoria to Premier Jacinta Allan after her “masterstroke” Friday announcement that farmers would be spared the 150 per cent hike under the new emergency services tax.
Pay the same as you did this year through the soon-to-be defunct fire services levy, Ms Allan said. But wait, there’s a catch or two: the pause for farmers is only 12 months, for householders and businesses wherever they be across Victoria - country or city - the big jumps will still come from July 1.
The Premier, a veteran of a quarter of a century in State Parliament, has deftly created time to walk away from a tax without published economic modelling or scrutiny and appraisal before implementation.
Her penultimate Budget before the 2026 state election has been effectively blown out of the water. Ms Allan has 11 months to create an “exit with grace” from the emergency services tax debacle that triggered massive protests from volunteer firefighters and farmers.
Her deferral of its application to farms has failed to quell the fury and anger of these rural people who plan life not within the political cycle but the timeframes of agriculture that are over many seasons - in metro language, that’s years.
They have memories, long enough to know when weather hits productivity and when governments get in the way of them being able to eke a living from the land.
Ms Allan will not want the spectre of her disastrous emergency services tax ligering for too long. By the time Christmas season barbecues start in November, the issue must be dead and buried or that fortunes of her government, currently languishing in opinion polls, will be difficult to revive in country areas. Even the premier’s own seat of Bendigo East, including several Loddon communities, would be targeted by opponents. Her electorate office has already been the backdrop to protests before en mass, rural anger descended on Spring Street.
Farmers I have spoken with over the past week are on alert for the Premier’s next move. They are CFA volunteers who know that containing a fire is one thing, working to control and extinguish takes time and then being ready for the blaze to flare again. They say the first battle has been won against the emergency services tax.
Yet, there’re not convinced that the Government has finished, in their words, “punishing country people and farmers”.
Premier Allan and her government must devise ways to fund its agenda without a punitive land tax disguised as an emergency service tax on agricultural land owners.
There’s a limit to how long you can milk the cow ... perhaps the Government needs to live within its means as our farmers do daily.