New Roads to Recovery (R2R) program

2005 - 2009

In January 2004, the Australian Government announced that the R2R program would be renewed for a further four years, as part of the AusLink initiative. R2R would receive funding of $300m a year - a total of $1.2bn.

It was however, planned that rather than the funding go directly to all councils on a formula basis, only two-thirds of the annual allocation ($200m) would do so. The remaining $100m p.a. would be allocated for strategic regional projects on a competitive national basis.

Following further strong representations by local government, this decision was reversed in September 2005, with the total funds being allocated to councils, as per the first R2R program.

A further bonus was the announcement of a further $150m over five years to fund roads of strategic regional importance and in unincorporated areas. This was subsequently delivered as the Strategic regional program of AusLink. Tpt webpage doc1d

Full details of the new program are available from DOTARS.