On the Roads Again

Despite questioning its adequacy, the Australian Catholic Social Welfare Commission welcomes the Government's regional roads package as a first step towards meeting the Regional Australia Summit's call for a 'sustained and long-term programme of infrastructure development.' The Commission is pleased to note the responsibility devolved to local governments in determining where funds are best allocated and the recognition of needs encompassing metropolitan regions. This points to a recognition by Government of the great diversity of regions requiring assistance and helps move debate beyond the divisive 'rural versus metropolitan' distinction.

Mr John Ferguson, Acting National Director, said "the Regional Australia Summit called for a 'quantum step' involving a rolling ten-year national plan for infrastructure development. This roads funding announcement must signal a meaningful first step towards meeting the infrastructure disadvantages of many regions. If this proves not to be the case, then the Government's package will risk being an ad-hoc response motivated solely by electoral concerns and little more than a pork-barrelling exercise," Mr Ferguson said.

"It is to be hoped that following 'listening' tours of rural regions, the Prime Minister and Treasurer are now determined to press on in addressing regional disadvantage, and above all to ensure that regional consequences of structural economic reforms now become central considerations in designing policy - not merely considered as an afterthought. The true test of the worth of the Treasurer's listening tour will be whether the litany of disadvantage endured by our nation's regions are meaningfully addressed. High fuel prices and the consequences of drought and flooding are but the latest examples."

"The Commission hopes that with the roads funding package the nation's regions have not just been crossed off the Government's 'to do' list. Persistent and localised disadvantage combined with glaring regional disparities requires nothing less than the 'comprehensive and convincing response' called for by the Regional Australia Summit," Mr Ferguson concluded.