Warren Truss (Wide Bay, National Party, Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for Page for his question. It is particularly timely today because we have representatives of Australia's 550 local government authorities in town for the annual general assembly of local government. I suspect there may be one or two of them in the gallery—I will not tell on you for having skipped out of the conference where you should be. But, nonetheless, they listened to the opening address and they got a lot of good news from that.

Local government plays a key role in delivering vital services for local communities. The last mile of road is just as important in the delivery of transport tasks as the highway or the railway line. The task of providing that last mile is a significant one for local councils. In many communities, the council is the biggest employer. That would certainly be the case in the member for Page's electorate, where he has a number of local authorities who work very hard to try and give their communities the opportunities and the lifestyle that people want who live outside the capital cities.

Supporting local government and working with local government is an important priority for this government. We rely on councils to help deliver a lot of the infrastructure and services our nation needs. The government has made in the last budget very substantial commitments to local government: $9.45 billion in financial assistance grants over the forward estimates; an expanded $2.1-billion Roads to Recovery program, which members opposite voted against in this parliament; the new $1-billion National Stronger Regions Fund—a lot of that will go through local authority; the new $300-million Bridges Renewal Program, the second round of which I announced this morning, will be dedicated exclusively to local government bridges to make sure that those last miles can remain open; $200 million extra for the Black Spots Program and for the heavy vehicle and safety productivity programs; $100 million which was announced just recently for the beef roads program mainly in northern Australian; and $45 million under the stronger communities program. These are all programs that will make a real difference to local communities and which local government will play a key role in implementing. We acknowledge that partnership and the thousands of jobs that are created through the provision of local services and we wish the ALGA well with their general assembly over the next couple of days.

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