Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As I understand it, due to a historical trade-off that occurred years ago, South Australia has been receiving a lower annual share of federal-local government road funding than other states, both in terms of dollars per person and dollars per kilometre of roads. South Australia has nearly seven per cent of the national population and over 11 per cent of the national road network, yet it receives only 5.4 per cent of local government road funding, if you look at a per-person allocation, or 7.3 per cent, if you look at a per-kilometre allocation. To address the inequity, since 2004-05 South Australia has been receiving an annual supplementary local road funding allocation of $20 million. Whilst the supplementary top up is very welcome, the current arrangement is far from satisfactory. Firstly, the funding is allocated on a year-by-year basis with no annual or long-term security. To highlight this point, under the last coalition government no payment was made for two years between 2015 and 2017.

Secondly, the payment is not indexed for inflation. If it was, according to the Local Government Association of South Australia, the annual allocation would now be $31.8 million instead of $20 million. Because the allocation is not indexed, the Local Government Association of South Australia claims that $56 million has been lost over the past nine years, which is the period since the supplementary funding was reinstated after the coalition government pause of 2015-2017. As we heard from the House Standing Committee on Regional Development, Infrastructure and Transport's inquiry into local government sustainability, additional road funding is a priority for local governments throughout Australia. For the Local Government Association of South Australia, the road funding inequity has been a cause of grievance for now nearly three decades. It's not in the interest of the federal government or the Local Government Association of South Australia to have the uncertainty, the annual lobbying and the negotiations to continue. They are time-wasting and costly.

Furthermore, local governments need to be able to plan with certainty. It is time to permanently resolve this issue in a satisfactory way to all parties and to end the charade that we go through every year in which local government representatives come to this place to lobby ahead of the May budget in order to secure another $20 million for the coming year.