Catherine King pledges $1bn to fix nation's troubled regional roads

Where the money was spent and exactly where "will be a matter for the councils", Infrastructure and Transport Minister Catherine King said on Sunday, November 19.

Ms King declined to pinpoint "trouble zones" in Victoria and NSW, but said the funding to start filtering through next year would peak at $1 billion.

"It'll be a matter for the councils how this money is spent in terms of the Roads to Recovery program," she said.

"Local councillors make that decision themselves, they know the local road networks better.

"The government will be investing more money in local roads, we will gradually, as of next year, be doubling the Roads to Recovery program.

"That is a program that goes to every single local council across the country based on a formula to allow them to improve our local roads.

"I know just how hard it is for our local councils to keep up with the maintenance and improvement of our local roads, with recent weather events."

Ms King said an infrastructure investment program review concluded that more money needed to go to local roads.

She said the federal government would allocate up to $1 billion for local councils, doubling the Roads to Recovery program.

"We're also going to be putting more money into the Blackspots Roads Program," she said.

"This is a program across the communities that local governments can apply to but, also, community members can nominate a road that they think needs improvements for safety.

"I don't think you have to go very far in any community to see that the local government has been struggling to keep up with the maintenance of these roads.

"We've seen story after story after story about potholes, the weather's been pretty terrible. Let's get on with the job of actually improving our local roads."

Ms King said the formula for how much each council got would be based on the population of the town, the distance of roads and how badly damaged they were.

"We'll start increasing the funding from next year's budget, so every single year, over the next four years, the Roads to Recovery funding will increase year-on-year until it hits a billion dollars and that is baked into the budget," she said.

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