We also have installed an irrigation system through our household herb garden as a method of sustainable home gardening. The off cuts from this irrigation system were then taken to the waste facility for disposal.

The waste facility attendant advised us that our rubbish would cost us $52. We refused to pay this amount as we already pay $168 each year to have access to the waste facility as we do not receive rubbish collection. We contacted council seeking to meet in an attempt to resolve the matter.

Council’s response was to email us an invoice for $52. We were told in the email that many of the items described in our email were not considered to be domestic waste. The “many” items were described as irrigation and bale wrappers. The charge of $52 was for a gate fee and an EPA levy.

If we lived “in town”, we would have a weekly pick up service of two bins. This would cost us $639 per year. In those bins we could place the same articles that we delivered to the waste facility and not have to pay a gate fee and EPA levy. If we were to do this each week and get charged $52 each time for the same items then the same service as provided to people in town would cost us $2704 plus $168 for the privilege of driving to the waste facility and back. We pay the waste facility access charge along with our rates, but it seems council finds it necessary to double dip and charge us to unload our rubbish once we have driven there. 

We wrote back to council again requesting a meeting and also to gain an understanding of how council had determined that our waste was not domestic. We were told by return email that the fee was assessed due to the nature of the load and that council would not meet with us to discuss the matter. We were told that we could make a submission on fees when the fees were next on exhibition.This seems to be the fall back position of council, that you can only comment on something when it suits council and not when there is an issue. Any other rural property owner who finds the waste charges unfair, please contact us so that we can ensure that everyone knows when the fee exhibition is taking place and we can make a concerted submission.

We have reluctantly paid the account as council has a policy of forwarding unpaid invoices to a debt collector when they fall due and this action would damage our financial reputation. It appears we have no redress with council for being double charged for disposal of rubbish. What a rort.

Over the last year or so, I have been rather critical of the council, particularly with regard to its rates structure, which is based on a mathematically crude formula that has resulted in unfair differential rates that favour some at the expense of others.

In August, we were out of the area for a few weeks. Before I left, not having yet received our rate notice, I calculated the first installment and scheduled it pay towards the end of the month. All this is beside the point - I think!

In late August, I received an email from the council informing me that we were one of 23 ratepayers who did not receive their rates notice as they had been singled out for proof checking and by some quirk of the system were not printed with the other 6000. While not suggesting that anything sinister is going on, it seems a curious coincidence that a person who has been active in seeking reform of Council and its policies is targeted for special treatment in this way.

But, on this occasion I put my suspicions aside to believe that the staff involved had decided that my notice is one that they should try to ensure was correct given the circumstances. The council postponed the due date for the first installment to 30 November, as it is required to do under the Act.

I rescheduled my BPAY transaction to pay towards the end of November. Imagine my surprise (to put it mildly) when, late last week, I received an overdue installment notice for non-payment of the first installment!

The mistakes made in the rating area over the last six years have astonished me. This latest stuff-up is trivial compared to the others. But if you cannot get the trivial things right, what hope is there for the more complex matters? I wonder if anyone in the office takes any notice of what is going on (or wrong) in the organisation.

In NSW it has been illegal to sell fireworks to the public for a little over 30 years, because of the injuries caused by their improper use. Breach of this law is punishable by imprisonment. Shouldn’t far stricter and harsher penalties be applied to the sale of arms?

We should hold the manufacturers and all involved down to the end users, both criminally and financially responsible for injury and material damage caused by their misuse. Misuse, for me, is pretty much any use, except immediate personal defence … perhaps.

The defence industries are not good neighbours. They even have their own minister, Christopher Pyne, to lobby their case from within the Coalition government!

These corporations sell their products to all and sundry, squirreling away the profits leaving the trail of carnage and destruction for the rest of the world to deal with. So it is high time that we hold everyone who profits from this, both criminally and financially responsible.