(1) Further to the answer to question No. 2194 (Hansard, 7 June 2001, page 27661) concerning Roads to Recovery program funding, for each year of operation of the program, which local government authorities (LGAs) have not certified that expenditure on roads funded from its own sources in a particular funding year has not been less than the average of the amounts expended on roads from these sources over the years 1998-99 to 2000-2001.

(2) Does his Department validate the information contained in the certifications by LGAs; if so, what are the validation processes; if not, does any other organisation audit LGA expenditure on roads.

(3) How many LGAs have had their certification validated.

(4) What are the results of the validation processes undertaken.

(5) What was the total LGA expenditure on roads in (a) 1998-99 and (b) 2001-2002.

(6) What was the total Roads to Recovery expenditure on roads by LGAs in 2001-2002.

(1) All LGAs that have provided annual reports have provided the certification required by the Roads to Recovery Programme guidelines.

(2) (3) and (4) The Roads to Recovery guidelines require LGAs to submit auditors' certificates in conjunction with their certifications.

(5) My Department does not hold this information.

(6) My Department holds enough information to provide a good estimate of this figure. However, it is contained in the annual reports submitted by councils and it would be necessary to manually extract it from over 700 individual files. In the circumstances, I am not prepared to allocate the resources to undertake this task. However, Roads to Recovery expenditure during 2001/02 could be expected to be in the same order as the amount paid to LGAs by the Commonwealth during that year ie $300 million.