Warwick Hall interviewed by ABC Radio's Kath Sullivan

ABC on Radio – 7^th May 2014

Kath	The Raymond Island Community Association. Welcome to ABC Gippsland Warwick.
Warwick	Good morning Kath.
Kath	OK. How much does it currently cost to catch the Raymond Island ferry?
Warwick	There are a number of price structures, as residents of the Island currently within our rates the cost of access to the ferry for the first two vehicles is covered so we pay our rates like everyone else and we get a pass for two vehicles. What’s proposed in the budget is that we’ll get one pass and for the second we’ll pay $200. For subsequent vehicles we’ll pay $500 now that’s per year, that’s a new charge. Every day access, if you were to go down to, if your mother lived on the island you went to visit her at the moment it would cost you $10 to take your car across and it’s proposed in the budget that it will cost $20 so they’re pretty significant increases. Increases for heavy vehicles, currently if someone brings a truck over to deliver a fridge, or a washing machine to a resident on the island it costs them $14 for that truck if it’s  less than 20 tonnes, the budget proposes it’s going to cost $30, that’s a 114% increase and of course the operator of the truck is not going to absorb that cost, that’s going to be passed onto the resident of the island. These increases are very significant and they do concern us.
Kath	When was the last time the fee for the ferry went up?
Warwick	Oh Kath, you’ve got me there, I can’t be sure but I would say it’s been a couple of years.
Kath	And could you recall any indication of what the increase might have been the last time that the fees were raised?
Warwick	Over the last, since the ferry has been operating, the fees have regularly increased and we have, the residents of the island have no issue with increasing in fees as CPI increases. In general average increases within this proposed budget are between 2 and 5%. Our rates like everyone else in the Shire are going up 4.9%but the magnitude of these increases is significant, they’re greater than that, that’s where we’ve got some concerns that we’d like the Shire to consider.
Kath	Are you happy with the current service that you receive from the Raymond Island ferry?
Warwick	Yes we are, the current contractor does an excellent job, the Shire does a good job. There will always be niggles, there’ll always be some complaints of course like any service it’s not perfect but generally speaking the majority of residents are happy with what we currently  have, we have no issue with Shire about the service, or the operator of the service, our issue more is that this proposes that access to our homes will become will become more expensive than it currently is.
Kath	What do you think would be an adequate, or appropriate fee increase for the services?
Warwick	Well it’s difficult to see why any increase, if it should occur, would be more than the increases that we’re seeing for other items in the budget and that’s CPI plus a little bit so as I say, on average our rates are 4.9% so something in the order of 2 to 5% would be consistent with the other increases, generally speaking, that are in the budget and there will be people that will object to any increase but that would be something that would be a bit more reasonable.
Kath	Have you raised these concerns with Council?
Warwick	Well we haven’t directly, the proposed budget, the draft hasn’t been out for all that long and we’ve only become aware of it in the last several days. As the Raymond Island Community Association, which has members from the island, we’ve been contacted by many residents  who expressed a great deal of concern about that and so we had a public meeting on Monday for people to voice their concerns, or talk about the issue, and a lot of people turned up a pretty consistent point of view that these proposed increases are unreasonable and inconsistent with the rest of the other budget increases and will have a significant effect on the costs of access  of residents and our visitors, our families, to the island.
Kath	How many residents are on Raymond Island at the moment?
Warwick	There are around about, don’t hold me to the exact number, there are around about 460. The demographic on the island is changing, we’re getting many more young families moving in with young children and these people, the kids are going to grow up and these kids are going to have to go to work in Bairnsdale or somewhere else and they’re going to need a car to do  that because there’s no other option and you can see that if these proposed increases went through a family of mum and dad and three kids, all of whom are going to have to have a car because there’s no option it would cost them about $1700 a year to go home every night.  We think that’s a bit rough.
Kath	Warwick Hall, we’re going to follow this one with a bit of interest, thanks for your time. Warwick Hall is the president of the Raymond Island Community Association. Happy to listen to his concerns about a proposed fee increase for the Raymond Island ferry is Councillor Mark Reeves, Mayor of the East Gippsland Shire Council. Councillor, thanks for your time this morning. Why is the fee for the ferry being raised 100%?
Mayor	Morning Cath, look it was good to hear Warwick and the feelings of the community because I understand there was a community meeting on Monday evening, and he’s correct, the draft budget is out for public consultation and it’s very important that people do interrogate that. Now a few years ago, about four years ago, there was a great deal of community engagement about access to Raymond Island and discussions around whether the ferry should remain or some other alternatives and generally the local people on Raymond Island quite animate with  the idea of the ferry, it is from our understanding, after consultation, a preferred method of access. If that’s the case we have a remiss in the council to make sure that it’s safe, reliable and compliant and we also understand that there’s a range of different views from residents. Now Warwick mentioned the fee structure that’s proposed, the annual fee for a non-resident is $500, the second car is $200, that’s proposed, but the first car is free. Now, at the moment, I need to put this into the context of the bigger picture, which is the total running costs to the island of the ferry. At the moment the ferry costs the Shire, and all residents, between $1.2  and $1.5m per annum in capital and recurrent costs to operate and the income proposed from this particular fee structure is about $300,000, it generates about $300,000.
Kath	So everybody listening to you in Omeo has just rolled their eyes and said why are their rates are paying for this service for 400 odd residents
Mayor	Correct, and Cath that’s the dilemma we as a council have so do we have so do we continue with the free access for all residents, which means that every resident in East Gippsland and Shire pay for that service or do we have a full user pay, or do we have something in between that’s a reasonable imposition on everybody and a reasonable cost to everybody. It’s a great dilemma.
Kath	Mark Reeves, why don’t you just build a bridge?
Mayor	Well, as I said, there was community engagement about four years ago that the consensus at the time was that the ferry should remain but I think there are a number of councillors that, and a number of us who would say look amortised over 20 or 20 years a bridge would cost about the same per annum and we’d end up with no recurrent costs in the future and I think that those conversations should be had
Kath	But you’d have no expense in the future
Mayor	That’s right
Kath	You’re going to recoup around $300,000 from this proposed system, how much did you recoup from the current existing system which would …….. those two cars?
Mayor	Considerably less than that, I don’t have the figures in front of me but clearly it was  considerably less than that and our concern is that when we start we want to have a safe, reliable, compliant ferry. Every two years we need to slip that ferry, it needs to be surveyed, that costs a significant amount for rate payers and we spent a lot of money recently, a  significant investment in the chains, the guides, the buffers, the engine replacement over time because if that’s our preferred method it has to be reliable for those people and there’s a  balance about how do we make that reasonable impost across the Shire.
Kath	When are you going to finalise your budget?
Mayor	Well the budget is out for consultation for the next four weeks, so three weeks from Friday, and we welcome all residents, not just residents from Raymond Island, to interrogate the budget and make submissions, that’s part of the process and we really welcome that.
Kath	Mark Reeves, we’ll have to leave it there, thanks for your time.
Mayor	Thanks Kath
Kath	Mark Reeve is the Mayor of the East Gippsland Shire Council