General News
16 September, 2025
Farmers maintain rates fury
FARMERS who attended a meeting with Tablelands Regional Council chief executive officer Dr Nikola Stepanov have walked away disappointed.
Local farmer Lawrence Masasso said the meeting, which had attracted more than 70 people, had received a “polished performance” from the CEO, but at the end of the evening there “was a lot of anger in the room.”
“I guess (Dr Stepanov) was saying things could be a lot worse - I think she was relying on growers not having a full understanding of how rates are done,” he said.
Local farmers are to be hit with a 15% rate rise for agricultural farming and a 20% jump for grazing properties (after lost discounts) based on land valuations in the area, compared to an 8% rise in towns.
It was the second agricultural forum organised by the CEO and followed recent criticism by peak industry group FNQ Growers that the TRC rate rises were crippling a “vulnerable” agricultural sector.
Dr Stepanov said last week that the meeting, held in Kairi on 3 September, had been “a really interactive and engaged Agriculture Forum, and we were pleased with the turnout”.
She said council had provided a presentation of why rates were changing in the different categories.
However, Mr Masasso said the argument for the hikes in rural properties had not been justified and did not acknowledge farmers had been targeted over the past 10 years.
“Three years ago, I showed TRC my own personal property had gone up 69% over 10 years. CPI during that time was 25%,” he said.
“That didn’t take into account the 20% we were about to go up at that time, and it didn’t take into account the 15% we’ve just had now.
“We’ve always had bigger (rate) increases than in town.”
Mr Masasso said he had specifically requested a breakdown of the rate rises for farm properties over the past 10 years for the meeting, but instead, a 10-year graph was shown that did not take into account the rise in land valuations during that period.
“They are really reluctant to share those figures and I’m pretty sure I know why. Because it doesn’t look great for what they’ve done to their rural community,” he said.
“I asked (Mayor Rod Marti) about his own personal situation, and I said, ‘are you making any more money out of your farm since your valuations went up?’ And he said, ‘of course I’m not’.
“That’s the argument we are making in a nutshell. Valuations have no relationship to how profitable your farm is.”
Mr Masasso said Dr Stepanov argued that council had countered the high valuations by dropping the rate in the dollar attached to the valuation, so that “we have not been hit as much as we could have been”.
“It’s a bit like saying you’ve had a dog bite rather than a shark taking a bite out of you,” he said.
“Is that fair to your farming and grazing community, where you’ve got Bega closing down, prices have not come back, the avocado bench markets project showing avocados are not profitable at the moment?
“There’s hurt all through the rural community, but it feels like there’s an implied belief there that the rural community is making this up and can handle it pretty much.
“It’s difficult being a councillor, I know that, and everyone’s costs are going up - the job’s tricky for them, everyone’s got competing interests, everyone wants more services, and less rates,” Mr Masasso said.
“But if TRC needs 10% more money every year, and you rate every category for 10%, the whole council area would grumble, but no one will feel they’ve been targeted.
“I did ask the CEO, but I didn’t get an answer, is it fair to hit us with 15%? You’ve got this black hole, so why didn’t you hit residential with 15%?
“We’ve never said we want to pay less rates, we’re part of the community.
“We want to do our share, but I think anyone who reads the figures of the last 10 years, would see we have carried a lot of people over that time – and this is what really disappoints me.”
