A coalition of consumer advocates has provided a joint submission on the Draft Ministerial Guidelines for Councils relating to payment of rates and charges. The submission welcomes the draft’s intent to improve consistency and fairness across Victorian councils but calls for stronger, mandatory standards to ensure ratepayers experiencing hardship are treated with dignity and safety. Recommendations include clearer binding language, trauma-informed approaches to family violence and economic abuse, compulsory staff training, defined timeframes for policy updates and hardship assessments, and transparent public reporting of hardship-related metrics.

FCVic contributed expertise on several critical areas: privacy and personal security for victim-survivors of family violence, recommendations for clear and consistent timeframes for hardship processes, transparent public reporting requirements, and improvements to definitions and assessment processes for hardship applications. These contributions aim to ensure councils adopt practices that prioritise safety, fairness, and accessibility for vulnerable ratepayers.

The submission was authored by Westjustice, Mortgage Stress Victoria, Financial Counselling Victoria, Consumer Action Law Centre, and Thriving Communities Australia, with additional sign-on support from other organisations committed to improving hardship responses across Victoria.