{"id":842786,"date":"2026-08-04T03:52:24","date_gmt":"2026-08-04T03:52:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/842786\/"},"modified":"2026-08-04T03:52:24","modified_gmt":"2026-08-04T03:52:24","slug":"barkly-council-seeks-to-increase-rates-for-mining-companies-in-northern-territory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/842786\/","title":{"rendered":"Barkly council seeks to increase rates for mining companies in Northern Territory"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Local Government Association of the Northern Territory (LGANT) is seeking legislative changes to allow councils to determine mining rates within their own areas, in a bid to increase their financial sustainability.<\/p>\n

Currently under the Local Government Act 2019, the NT minister for local government sets the rates for mining tenements and pastoral leases, instead of allowing councils to set the rates, as they do for other properties.<\/p>\n

But LGANT president Peter Pangquee said councils should be able to rate mining companies the same as they did other ratepayers, based on the size of their properties.<\/p>\n

“We appreciate the mining industry and what they do for the Northern Territory, but what we want is a bit of fairness,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Local Government Association of the Northern Territory (LGANT) president Peter Pangquee. (ABC News: Xavier Martin)<\/p>\n

Mr Pangquee said most councils in the NT had small populations and few rateable properties, meaning a smaller revenue base, which made it hard for councils to upgrade infrastructure and provide services.<\/p>\n

“Currently the mining industry pays $1.6 million right across the Territory to all councils,” he said.<\/p>\n

“That’s not a lot when you look at the proportion of intake by those companies.”<\/p>\n

Council’s costs soaring<\/p>\n

A report by the Industry Capability Network NT showed mining across the NT was set to boom, with the operations in the Barkly region alone expected to generate $35 billion by 2030.<\/p>\n

Barkly Regional Council Mayor Sid Vashist said only a small amount of that money was flowing back to the council, yet the council was struggling to maintain its roads, fleet vehicles and infrastructure.<\/p>\n

\"Chest-up<\/p>\n

Sid Vashist is the mayor of the Barkly Regional Council. (ABC News: Will Green)<\/p>\n

“Under the conditional rating system in the Northern Territory, it’s not great for the councils,” he said.<\/p>\n

“A mine in Queensland that’s producing gold is potentially paying between $130,000 to $250,000 in rates to a council. Currently, we might have mines in our region that will be potentially paying between $10,000 to $15,000, so the disparity is huge.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

The Tennant Creek library’s broken windows are boarded up, adding to the costs. (ABC Alice Springs: Victoria Ellis)<\/p>\n

Mr Vashist said it would cost council $155 million over 10 years to maintain its assets, but council would only have a spare $5 million to use over the same amount of time.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, he said damage to council buildings from vandalism and antisocial behaviour could cost millions of dollars to fix.<\/p>\n

“I’m not proud about it and we need to change that story, but we don’t have the cash to do it,” he said.Industry rejects rate rises<\/p>\n

Minerals Council of Australia executive director of Northern Australia Cathryn Tilmouth said increasing rate payments would disincentivise the mining industry from operating in the Northern Territory, where it made a huge economic contribution.<\/p>\n

“It’s not just about the rates that are paid, you’ve got employment, you’ve got service and supply industry getting contracts from these projects, you’ve got all the infrastructure that mining projects actually deliver that the government couldn’t otherwise,” she said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Cathryn Tilmouth says mining contributes a lot to the NT economy. (ABC News: Tristan Hooft)<\/p>\n

Ms Tilmouth said rates were meant to be paid in return for service provision, but councils were not providing services to mines.<\/p>\n

“What is the mining industry actually getting from local government? Rubbish collection, streetlights, roadworks, they’re not getting any of that,” she said.<\/p>\n

“The mining industry is fairly self-sustainable in that area.”<\/p>\n

The Minister for Local Government Steve Edgington said he would make “evidence-based decisions”, but he had to “balance” all the things that came with mining development against the benefits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Local Government Association of the Northern Territory (LGANT) is seeking legislative changes to allow councils to determine…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":842787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,414847,99,414852,414845,414846,414851,414850,414849,414848],"class_list":["post-842786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-barkly-regional-council","tag-business","tag-conditional-rating","tag-lgant","tag-local-government-association-of-the-northern-territory","tag-minerals-council-of-australia","tag-mining-in-the-territory","tag-mining-rate-payments","tag-rate-payments-nt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842786","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=842786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/842786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/842787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=842786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=842786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=842786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}