Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I stand to voice my support and recognition for the role of local government, particularly when it comes to local roads in regional Australia and certainly in my electorate of Mayo. The poor state of our country roads is a regular complaint to my office and an issue that comes up time and again. When I did an electorate-wide survey, which I mailed out to everyone in my community and where we had thousands of responses, certainly our local roads were in the top 10 issues for people. It is why, with my Senate colleagues in 2017, we fought so hard to secure the two-year funding of $40 million for local government roads in South Australia and why I'm advocating for the continuation of the Supplementary Local Road Funding program.

This program addressed the anomaly that South Australia experienced: we have 11 per cent of the nation's roads and we have seven per cent of the nation's population, and yet we were receiving less than five per cent of the funding from government to maintain our roads. That was one of the budget cuts of 2014. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott took that $40 million from South Australia. I was very pleased to get that reinstated, but it does run out next July. I'm already in conversations with the government, with my team, about reinstatement for that, because it is critical for our roads.

I welcome the black spot funding for another three years, but I do call on this government to examine its long-term commitment to local road funding in South Australia. I believe that piecemeal black spot grant applications for projects that may or may not be successful are just not enough. I know that from the work that my office did with the Parliamentary Library. We mapped the electorate of Mayo: the casualties, the injuries, the major crashes and where the black spot projects had been funded. When you look at that across the nation, the data of where the crashes are does not always marry with where the funding goes. I believe that the black spot funding is one of those projects that is always at risk of pork-barrelling, and this reinforces my belief that local councils need the financial autonomy to place upgrades for the roads where they know that they need them most. They are on the roads every day.

When I recently raised Supplementary Local Road Funding program with the Prime Minister, his response was that further investment in South Australia will be 'considered as part of future budgets'. This was after the Prime Minister spruiked South Australia's share of the Financial Assistance Grant program. Let's not forget that the indexation for this program was frozen again back in 2014 and only resumed in September 2017. We have a lag there in real terms for council, and yet council is expected to deliver more and more each year. Funding for local government should not be alms for the poor. We need to properly equip our local governments. They deliver on our roads, but they also deliver on a whole range of wellbeing programs throughout our community. More and more, state and federal governments are expecting councils to do more and more with the little money that they have.

In Mayo, we have challenging terrain and we have, sadly, a very high level of fatalities in our region. Right now, my community is deeply mourning the loss of two teenagers in a crash between Strathalbyn and Wistow. It is a state government road, but one with limited passing opportunities and it has failed to keep pace with the population growth and increased traffic in my community. I know that the Alexandrina and Mount Barker councils have made numerous appeals in recent years to the South Australian government to invest in safety improvements. I also raised the condition of this road with the former state Labor government. I understand that the new state Liberal government is now considering upgrades; however, we have lost two more people. This is a road that needs urgent—urgent—attention.

As the member for Mayo, I am more than familiar with all the roads across my electorate that need upgrading—Victor Harbor Road, Main South Road and the Adelaide to Mannum Road. My fellow members would know the needs in their regions. Local councils know their roads. Fixing local roads is usually the biggest part of their annual budgets, which is why it's so important that we adequately fund them. So I call on this government for South Australia: please continue the supplementary road funding and not just the $40 million over two years. We need this to be properly indexed. I would also call on the government to catch up with the federal assistance grants. The freeze was in 2014. We had three years of no increase. I think government needs to work on this immediately.

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