Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On behalf of the Standing Committee on Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government, I present the committee’s report, incorporating a dissenting report, entitled Funding regional and local community infrastructure: principles for the development of a regional and local community infrastructure funding program, final report, together with the minutes of proceedings.

Ordered that the report be made a parliamentary paper.

Tonight, I am pleased to table the committee’s final report of its inquiry into funding regional and local community infrastructure. The tabling of this report is timely. Across the nation, regional Australia is struggling to cope with the impact of the global financial crisis. It has become even more difficult for communities which already lacked adequate or updated infrastructure to find the finances required to build the community infrastructure they need—infrastructure that will increase the liveability of the area and help to grow their communities into the future.

Government programs such as the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program should assist in this regard. Indeed, the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program has already provided substantial sums to local governments around Australia in the form of direct payments and grants. This is a good thing, and the committee supports continued funding for regional and local community infrastructure. However, more specifically, it is the development of a genuine accountable and ongoing grant system that has been the focus of the recommendations in the interim and final report. I stress ‘ongoing’ because local governments are struggling to provide sufficient levels of infrastructure for their communities. Community organisations have also been hit by a significant drop in donations and the capacity of their members or supporters to fund community facilities. This is evidenced by the enormous number of applications to the government’s first round of community infrastructure funding—strategic projects—and the some 3,000 applications to the first round of the Jobs Fund.

The committee understands this and, therefore, its first recommendation in this report is directed at ensuring that there continues to be ongoing funding support for community infrastructure beyond the direct payments already provided under the Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program. Of equal importance is the need to ensure that non-profit organisations have access to funding of this nature. The committee does not oppose direct infrastructure funding for local government, as long as it is not at the expense of non-profit organisations.

Anecdotal evidence suggests that in some cases local governments have canvassed non-profit organisations in their communities for project recommendations, as part of their Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program requests. Hopefully, this has been a common approach for local governments around the country, but to be sure the committee has recommended that the government examine this issue with the intention of ensuring that non-profit organisations continue to receive Commonwealth government funding through this program.

When tabling the interim report I stated that infrastructure is vital to a community’s wellbeing and sustainability and it was important that the government gets this new program right and gives regions across Australia access to infrastructure funding on a fair and transparent basis. The final report stresses, in simple terms, principles which the committee believes are fundamental to the development of a fair and transparent funding program. The principles espoused by the committee in this report have been grouped under three headings: availability, accessibility and accountability. Availability refers to a set of program guidelines which clearly establish what types of projects will be funded, who is eligible for funding and how the funds will be distributed. Specifically, the committee recommends that the government consider the need for clarity and simplicity when structuring program guidelines. This means that guidelines should clearly outline what constitutes an eligible application and how that application will be assessed and funds awarded. The principle of accessibility focuses on developing a simple, streamlined application process, supported by application development assistance. It is the committee’s recommendation that an accessible program is one which provides useful information to applicants through various sources. Furthermore, the application process will only be truly accessible if personal support is available to applicants.

Accountability stresses the importance of ensuring that decisions made throughout the funding program are well documented and can be adequately expressed. Accountability is vital. The Regional Partnerships program was heavily criticised by the Audit Office because it was not accountable, and we must learn from those lessons. To that end, the committee concludes with a recommendation supporting increased program accountability through the employment of a centralised assessment process administered with appropriate resources. This would be supplemented by an acquittal process which utilises well-structured funding agreements where expenditure is based on a thorough examination of project milestones. I would like to stress that these recommendations are not simply aspirational; they form the basis upon which the committee interim report recommendations should be considered and they reflect the views of many who spoke with the committee at its public hearings.

I am disappointed that the committee was not able to reach consensus on a number of key points, largely around the funding of private sector interests. I think that, given that members of the current government had an experience of the Regional Partnerships program that was quite vastly different from that of members of the current opposition and, in particular, the National Party, it was inevitably always going to be the case that we would have some dissent.

As I note in this report, the level of participation and assistance provided to the committee by regional Australia has been exceptional, and I would like once again to thank those who participated in the inquiry. I would like to thank the committee secretariat—in particular Michael Crawford for his work on this inquiry. When considered together, the interim and final reports of this inquiry present options for a wider framework which the government can utilise in developing an ongoing, fair and accountable funding program which meets the needs and expectations of regional Australia.

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