David Johnston (WA, Liberal Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

The 2013-14 budget saw $2.2 billion allocated to local governments under the Financial Assistance Grant program. This includes an accelerated payment of $1.1 billion, which was paid in June 2013. The remaining $1.1 billion will be distributed in 2013-14. In the 2014-15 budget, the government announced that the indexation applied to the Financial Assistance Grant program would be paused for three years. This savings measure delivered $900 million. As a result, the national financial assistance pool will be an estimated $9.3 billion over the forward estimates. This will continue to fluctuate due to changes in the population estimates by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The situation is that we will accelerate the payment of $1.1 billion to June this year and distribute the remaining $1.1 billion, as I have said, this year for the Financial Assistance Grant pool. Funding increases through the Roads to Recovery program provides an additional $350 million in 2015-16. The Black Spot Program, much of which I talked about yesterday, provides an additional $200 million in 2015-16. This will significantly impact and offset the effect on local governments from the freeze on the Financial Assistance Grant program. They are paid equally in quarterly instalments to state and territory governments for immediate distribution to local government bodies. That immediate distribution helps them greatly. The fourth quarterly payment to local government— (Time expired)