David Gillespie (Lyne, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak against this motion opposing the government's decision to freeze indexation of Financial Assistance Grants to local governments across Australia. As you and everyone in this House well knows, we have a huge accumulated federal deficit which needs to be addressed, and these changes to local government grants are a responsible reaction to that. But people are being selective about where these freezes are occurring, and the outcome of that, because they are being taken in isolation. At the same time as these indexation freezes were announced, an extra $350 million was put into the Roads to Recovery program and an extra $100 million, for two years in a row, was put into the Black Spots program. At the same time, $300 million was announced for the Bridges Renewal program, as well as $200 million for Heavy Vehicle Safety and Productivity improvements and $229 million to go into the national highway upgrade.

Why is this good for regional councils? The answer is that there is a distorted and disproportionate income differential between regional and metropolitan councils, and these changes to Roads to Recovery, Bridges Renewal and Black Spot funding benefit regional and rural councils more. Not all of the money in the FAGs grants is tied to roadwork, but with the Black Spot program and Roads to Recovery, we are getting funds tied to road building and road recovery activity, which is the biggest burden that these regional and rural councils—where the National Party has seats—have to face. To put things in perspective, the difference in population density makes a huge difference for metropolitan councils with rates and also developer contributions, as there is always more development going on in the metropolitan centres. The councils will have to make their own decisions on how they manage their money, but federal financial assistance grants are not their only source of income.

Some of my regional councils would love to be responsible for a total road area of 97 kilometres, which Strathfield Council has—whereas Port Macquarie has 1,312 kilometres to look after, without the rate base or developer contributions you see in Strathfield. It is of interest that Marrickville Council has a total of 216 kilometres, which ends up being 2.6 kilometres per thousand people, with a population density of 4,905 people per square kilometre—as opposed to Gloucester, which has something like 20 per square kilometre. So there is an inherent benefit to regional and rural councils through these changes, let alone in the Lyne Electorate, where we have announced $17.5 million for Bucketts Way, between Gloucester and Taree, and all the councils in my area that have very large numbers—

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