Financial sustainability

Pensioner Rate Rebates
Funding for Pensioner rate rebates has been maintained at current levels with $78 million allocated for 2024-25.

Cost Shifting
Disappointingly there are no specific initiatives or measures in this budget designed to meaningfully reduce or remove cost shifting. 

Red Fleet
There are no initiatives in the Budget that address the issue of Red Fleet assets.

Emergency Services Levy (ESL) – Council Contributions
ESL council contributions are forecast to decline from $210 million in 2023-24 to $203 million in 2024-25, a reduction of 3 per cent.

Emergency Services Funding Reform
This budget confirms the government's commitment to remove the ESL from insurance policies and replace it with a broad-based property levy.

However, it is very disappointing that the papers do not provide a commitment to remove the ESL council contributions. LGNSW advocacy is adamant that a fairer, more transparent and more sustainable broad based property levy must replace both the ESL on insurance policies and the ESL on councils.

Audit costs
There are no initiatives in this budget that address the issue of rapidly escalating costs of audit on local government.

Office of Local Government (OLG)
The 2024-25 budget allocates an additional $37.4 million over four years to bolster the capacity of the OLG.

This is a large increase following a much more modest one off increase of $4.5 million in 2023-24. This follows a decade of flat or declining budgets.

This increase is intended to assist the OLG to enact better regulation and enhance its ability to intervene quickly when governance and or financial issues are identified. It will also support delivery of reform. 

LGNSW has repeatedly advocated for better resourcing of the OLG so that it can better support local government.

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