Financing Sustainability in Local Government: an analysis of the Roads to Recovery Program in New South Wales local government

A crisis has developed in the maintenance and renewal of vital Australian local infrastructure that has attracted the attention of several recent public inquiries and some academic scholarship. However, an unfortunate feature of the subsequent debate on the local infrastructure crisis has been its almost total neglect of the role of the Commonwealth 'Roads to Recovery' Program which has helped to alleviate this crisis. Using the institutional context of 'Roads to Recovery' funding to New South Wales local government, this paper seeks to remedy this neglect by presenting an initial exploratory analysis of the operation of the 'Roads to Recovery' Program.