I’m sure some were expecting me to rant about gender identity and discrimination, and I will, but next week. Right now I’m too angry about bad numbers to focus on such confected nonsense.
We seem to be surrounded with bad numbers at the moment, and the one that has consumed most of my week is the Armidale Regional Council Draft Budget, with consultation closing tomorrow.
Armidale Regional Council seems to be asking ratepayers to endorse a budget that looks less like a financial plan and more like someone sat in a room throwing random numbers up on a whiteboard at a whiteboard.
Not because councils shouldn’t spend money. Not because every estimate must be exact to the cent. But because there comes a point where the sheer volume of rounded numbers, vague project scopes and unexplained assumptions stops looking like budgeting and starts looking like fiction with line items.
By my count, about 85–90 per cent of the listed projects are rounded to the nearest thousand, ten thousand, or even hundred thousand dollars.
$900,000.
$50,000.
$1 million.
$20,000.
$100,000.
Again and again and again.
Real budget costing almost never looks like that. Real costing produces ugly numbers – $1,758,554 or $19,720 or $446,031. It produces figures that reveal actual engineering assessments, contractor quotes, contingency modelling and procurement work.
What this budget has instead are suspiciously neat figures that look less like costed infrastructure and more like someone asking ChatGPT what a footpath probably costs, and then plugging it in to the spreadsheet.
This is not a ten-year strategic aspiration document where broad assumptions are acceptable. This is an annual operational budget. This is the document council uses to justify rates, projects and spending priorities.
So what exactly are ratepayers being asked to endorse?
Not a list of properly scoped projects with verified funding and delivery schedules.
Not a transparent statement of priorities.
Instead, residents are being handed a giant collection of rounded estimates attached to projects that may or may not happen, may or may not be funded, and may or may not even have proper costing work behind them.
The document does admit that the $193 million capital program is a misleading program as $131 million of that figure relates to the Kempsey Road disaster restoration works being project-managed on behalf of Transport for NSW. Strip that out and council’s actual capital program is closer to $62 million.
That is not a minor accounting detail. That is the difference between presenting council as overseeing one of the largest infrastructure programs in regional NSW or the considerably smaller reality.
But the real problem is not just the numbers themselves. It is what the numbers reveal about priorities.
While Council repeatedly warns about financial sustainability pressures, there still appears to be endless money available for branding exercises, festivals, “activation”, and a bunch of events I generally refer to as “fun time with Sam”.
The Big Chill Festival receives $350,000. Regional branding strategies receive another $100,000. And the one you’ve probably already heard – $1.5 million for preliminary works on the New England Rail Trail.
A speculative recreational bike track gets six times the allocation of the footpath renewal program.
Think about that for a moment.
Actual footpaths used daily by elderly residents, people with disabilities, parents with prams and school students receive a fraction of the funding being directed toward a tourist attraction that may never deliver the economic miracle repeatedly promised by its supporters.
That is not infrastructure prioritisation. That is political vanity spending dressed up as regional development.
Sure, maybe some of these seemingly frivolous projects are worthwhile. Maybe some will eventually produce benefits commensurate with expenditure.
But councils under genuine financial pressure do not normally spend like lifestyle influencers on a shopping spree with somebody else’s credit card.
I’m less concerned about that potential waste than I am about the astonishing underfunding of the very critically necessary works needed – such as the urgent need to upgrade water infrastructure in Guyra. The million here, million there, approach in that section of the budget indicates they haven’t even started figuring out what’s required, it’s not a priority, and the people of Guyra will just have to put up with having foul water that makes them sick from time to time, because the Council is more focused on parades and festivals.
Sure, a million here, a million there, eventually you start talking about real money. But if they did the damn work I’d be astonished if fixing the water quality issues in Guyra didn’t have a price tag at least ten times that which has been budgeted.
Ratepayers should be able to read a budget document and have a decent understanding of where their money is going, and what things cost. This budget doesn’t even make it clear which are fully funded projects, speculative grant applications, or aspirational wish-list items.
And competent Councils do not produce budgets filled with rounded placeholders and then ask the community to trust them blindly.
It’s not a big ask. Just do the work, and get the numbers right.
Perhaps someone thought if the numbers look official enough, maybe nobody will ask questions.
Sorry, not sorry.
End rant.
Dr RK (Kath) Crosby is the CEO of research and strategy company KORE CSR, former strategist for the Australian Democrats, and holds a PhD in political behaviour. She is also a well known migraine and health advocate, and the Publisher of New England Times and North Coast Times.
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