By Mayor Matt Burnett, President of the Australian Local Government Association
Australia’s 537 councils are calling for long-term sustainable funding to build better communities ahead of the federal election.
We are asking the next Australian Government to Put Our Communities First and have outlined five key funding priorities as a significant uplift to all councils’ budgets:
- $1.1 billion per year for enabling infrastructure to unlock housing supply
- $500 million per year for community infrastructure
- $600 million per year for safer local roads
- $900 million per year for increased local government emergency management capability and capacity
- $400 million per year for climate adaptation
We want these new funding programs – totalling $3.5 billion – to be distributed across all councils, on a formula-basis, similar to Financial Assistance Grants and Roads to Recovery funding, which has been successfully delivered for many years.
However, our success relies on the collective strength and engagement of your councils. I urge you to proactively engage with your federal MPs and local candidates to highlight the urgent need for long-term sustainable funding to better support your communities.
This will empower us to deliver local place-based solutions to the challenges our nation is facing in affordable housing, road safety, natural disasters and climate change.
Importantly, it will also ensure every community across Australia benefits, including smaller, regional-based councils that often miss out on competitive federal funding programs.
For too long, we’ve been stuck in a challenging grant round cycle, and we need to be better supported to deliver local solutions to national priorities.
I’ve already visited Canberra several times this year to brief Federal Ministers, Shadow Ministers and crossbenchers on the importance of our proposed funding reforms. And it’s great to see they’re engaged and listening to our concerns.
But we also need your on-the-ground support to ensure that increasing funding for local government gets the proper attention and debate it deserves.
Last month, a Federal Parliamentary inquiry into local government sustainability – which received more than 280 submissions, including from councils – confirmed the need for better long-term funding.
The interim report showed councils have reached breaking point, after many years of delivering more local services and infrastructure but with less funding. It’s clear our current funding model is broken and needs to be fixed. That’s why we need your support this federal election to deliver fair funding for local government and put our communities first.
Having a strong, sustainable and vibrant local government sector is critical not just for our communities, but for the health, productivity and future of our nation.
For more information, visit putourcommunitiesfirst.com.au
