ALGA federal election advocacy focus: Address the South Australian road funding anomaly

For many years, there has been a shortfall in the level of funding to South Australian councils under the Identified Roads Component of their Financial Assistance Grants (FAGs).

This funding is immensely important to helping South Australian councils keep their roads safe for motorists by upgrading and maintaining their local road networks. South Australia has 11% of Australia’s identified local roads and 7% of its population, but receives just 5.5% of federal local roads funding.

Since 2003, successive Governments have applied bandaid funding to this unfair funding formula. This supplementary funding stopped in the 2014-15 Federal Budget.

In 2017, the Commonwealth made a decision to reinstate supplementary road funding for South Australia at the rate of $20 million per annum for two years (2017-18 and 2018-19). Although this decision was welcomed by ALGA and South Australian councils, it is a temporary fix to a demonstrated problem.

Ahead of the next federal election, ALGA is calling for the Commonwealth to address the South Australian road funding anomaly by adjusting the Identified Roads Component of FAGs to make the additional funding to South Australia permanent.

Find out more about this and other federal election initiatives from ALGA at www.allpoliticsislocal.com.au