{"id":522990,"date":"2026-03-06T18:09:17","date_gmt":"2026-03-06T18:09:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/522990\/"},"modified":"2026-03-06T18:09:17","modified_gmt":"2026-03-06T18:09:17","slug":"residents-of-tourist-hotspot-rage-over-proposed-rate-hike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/522990\/","title":{"rendered":"Residents of tourist hotspot rage over proposed rate hike"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Families and businesses in one of Australia&#8217;s biggest tourist hot spots are raging over a proposed 39.9 per cent rate hike.<\/p>\n<p>Counsellors at Cessnock Council last month voted in favour of the increase, citing the need to catch up financially.<\/p>\n<p>It follows an independent report into Cessnock Council which revealed an $8 million budget deficit.<\/p>\n<p>READ MORE: <a href=\"https:\/\/9now.nine.com.au\/a-current-affair\/retired-mechanic-pauly-mccamleys-extraordinary-marine-project\/a475ce62-6a3c-4641-bbad-5986e355c85f\" target=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"Retired mechanic&#039;s extraordinary marine project honouring a former president\">Retired mechanic&#8217;s extraordinary marine project honouring a former president<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/https:\/\/prod.static9.net.au\/fs\/177fa6d0-c787-47a5-ac0d-b2e3b43f2b61.jpeg\"   alt=\"Families and businesses in one of Australia's biggest tourist hot spots are raging over a proposed 39.9 per cent rate hike.\"\/>Families and businesses in one of Australia&#8217;s biggest tourist hot spots are raging over a proposed 39.9 per cent rate hike. (A Current Affair)<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s pretty disgusting,&#8221; said mother-of-three Kirstie Collins.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;People are not going to be able to afford to stay in their homes.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The proposed hike comes at a time where the popular wine region has experienced a 45 per cent drop in tourism due to cost-of-living pressures.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s like a slow death spiral,&#8221; said veteran winemaker Colin Peterson.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;For the first time ever in 40 years, we&#8217;ve actually made people redundant.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If the hike is approved, business owners will have to pay an additional $2070 a year.<\/p>\n<p>Farmland owners face an additional $1360 per year, and residents will have to fork out $596 more.<\/p>\n<p>The decision is now with the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal, and the results are expected by May.<\/p>\n<p>Watch the full story in the video player above.\ufeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Families and businesses in one of Australia&#8217;s biggest tourist hot spots are raging over a proposed 39.9 per&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":522991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-522990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/522991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}