THE national voice of local government will go into bat for councils in a bid to secure federal funding to help repair community assets.
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Councils across Australia have submitted more than 100 examples of ailing community infrastructure in need of replacement, maintenance or upgrades within just a week of a call-out from the Australian Local Government Association (ALGA).
The association is compiling a Community Infrastructure Ideas Register.
Port Macquarie-Hastings Council is not currently considering a submission to the register but supports calls for increased funding to address infrastructure renewals for local government.
Port Macquarie-Hastings Council's acting general manager Matt Rogers said the council placed significant focus on its own asset management planning to ensure it had accurate information on the condition of assets and the ongoing cost to maintain them, including the value of backlog maintenance that needed to be tackled.
Port Macquarie-Hastings Council is responsible for more than $2 billion of assets.
Meanwhile, examples submitted to ALGA's Community Infrastructure Ideas Register include ovals, swimming pools, walking paths, halls, libraries and senior citizen's centres.
ALGA president Troy Pickard said the staggering response to the register from councils showed the critical need for more to be done to support local government in delivering adequate and appropriate community infrastructure.
"The impact of under-funding goes beyond the degradation of our important community infrastructure, it also limits the capacity of local councils to develop communities and contribute to local and regional development," he said.
Cr Pickard said the federal government's Regional and Local Community Infrastructure Program made an important contribution in 2008-10 in assisting councils to meet the decades-long backlog and under spend on community infrastructure.
"However, this program also highlighted just how much more needs to be done as there is still infrastructure that is in urgent need of repair, including some built in the 1950s and 1960s," he said.
The information collected through the register will be used to support ALGA's case for federal funding of $300 million a year over four years for a regional and community infrastructure fund.
