Transcript - Interview - 1206 2CC Drive with Leon Delaney

LEON DELANEY: The Federal Government has announced $4.4 billion over the next five years in the Roads to Recovery program to deliver funding to rectify the badly damaged local road infrastructure around Australia. Joining me now, the Minister for Regional Development, Local Government and Territories, and Member for Eden-Monaro, Kristy McBain. Good afternoon.

KRISTY MCBAIN: Good afternoon, Leon.

DELANEY: Thanks for joining us today. You know how much I love some good road funding because driving around on our regional roads, you can see there's plenty of need, isn't there?

MCBAIN: Absolutely. You, like everyone else, will be pleased with this announcement. It means that every council, the ACT Government, and a number of unincorporated council areas across the country will now receive some extra dollars to maintain our roads. We all deserve safe local roads to drive on. We're doubling that funding from a $500 million a year to a billion dollars a year over the forward estimates, which means over that period, the ACT will receive $70 million over five years, which is an increase of $30 million.

DELANEY: Yes. So, this is primarily funding that's directed to local councils. But because of our unique arrangements here in the ACT, our territory government is the local council. So, that's why they're part of this program, isn't it?

MCBAIN: That's right. This predominantly goes to local councils, but we do have an arrangement with the ACT where they get some dollars. For Eden-Monaro councils, this means they'll receive more than $63 million over five years, which is an increase of $26 million just in Eden-Monaro alone. For so many Canberrans and so many people across Eden-Monaro, we drive a long way to get to schools, and to sport and to work. This money is going to be very well received and well utilised by local councils and the ACT Government right across our region.

DELANEY: I was going to ask you about councils across the border, whether it's in Eden-Monaro or elsewhere in the greater Canberra region. So, specifically, do all councils get a chunk of this funding?

MCBAIN: Yes. Every council will receive an uplift. 546 councils around the country will see increases in their Roads to Recovery funding. We're doing away with specific grant programs or colour-coded spreadsheets. This is about uplifting every council across the country, because every community deserves to have roads that are well maintained and safe to drive on, because it's our main mode of transport.

DELANEY. So, once you've handed over the money to the councils and in our case, the ACT Government, do you have any sway over where and how it's actually spent.

MCBAIN. Councils will tell us which roads they are spending it on, it does come down to council priorities. Most of our councils across NSW and across the country have an elected council panel. They need to make the decisions and give priorities to the government, and we want to see that money being utilised and spent in its best possible manner. I've done a lot of visits over the last few weeks to councils talking about Roads to Recovery. I'm yet to hear from a council that this is a bad program. It's good news for everyone, and every person who uses our roads will be happy that there's more money going into them.

DELANEY: Yeah, absolutely. And as I said, you don't have to go too far to see where the need is along our regional roads network right across Australia. There's more to the announcement today, though, as well. You've also got additional funding now for improved data collection. What's involved in that?

MCBAIN: Data collection is really important. We need to know where the black spots are and where the road crashes are happening. We're working with the states and territories to make sure that that data is released. We're signing an agreement to make sure that road data does come out, and we've got some dollars around that. It’s incredibly important, because the more we can use data, the more it will drive where we spend money in roads. We've already increased the Road Black Spot funding from $110 million a year to $150 million a year. We want to see councils and state and territory governments utilising that data to improve the roads where we know the crash data is showing us it needs to be improved.

DELANEY: Well, this has been one of the concerns expressed by road safety advocacy groups and motoring groups like the NRMA and so forth all around the country, about not necessarily collecting or collating data about road safety and road accidents in particular, in a nationally consistent manner. Does this increased funding address that?

MCBAIN: What we're hoping will happen is that there will be a consistent manner in which every jurisdiction does that. Where it will be reported in a manner that will able to be utilised by not only those advocacy groups and groups like NRMA, but also from councils as well, so that they know where best to spend their money and what it needs to be spent on. My colleague, Carol Brown is doing a really good job in that road safety portfolio, and is working with the other jurisdictions to make sure that we are pushing heavily to get them to release data and make it available.

DELANEY: Indeed. Kristy, thanks very much for chatting today.

MCBAIN: Great to speak with you, Leon.