Talking to John "The Highway Man"

“This injection of funds means councils can plan and undertake work now to restore and help protect against reoccurring problems on the roads you use every day, making them more resilient to help keep local communities, visitors and the freight industry safe and supply chains moving.

“After we announced our initial $50 million injection to help fix potholes across regional NSW in November last year a number of councils sat down with me and asked for additional help and funding.

“Communities in the Central West have endured catastrophic flooding and severe wet weather events the region has never seen before and this of course has had a massive impact on councils’ road network.

“That is why we have secured an additional $280 million for regional councils to fix their potholes, we also provided cash advancements for emergency disaster funding to eligible councils and have diverted Transport for NSW road crews to help fix local roads in the Central West.

“Since 2019, we have invested $1.8 billion into fixing the local roads you use to make your daily life easier.

“I encourage councils to get the deeds signed quickly so that funding for your local and regional roads gets to you sooner for essential repairs to get underway.”

Mayor of Forbes Shire Council Phyllis Miller said Council will receive $3.3 million to help with the mammoth task of repairing their local road network.

The Regional and Local Roads Repair Program is in addition to the $50 million the NSW Liberal and Nationals Government provided before Christmas to help regional councils carry out emergency pothole patching.

That funding will help to fill around 420,000 potholes on council roads in addition to the more than 220,000 potholes that government crews have patched inside the last 12 months on state-owned roads.

Funding allocations for the four Local Government Areas in the Orange electorate:

Cabonne Council - $4,234,037.28

Forbes Shire Council$3,395,609.54

Orange City Council - $937,795.60

Parkes Shire Council$3,955,150.89