Social Services Department Doesn’t Track How Much Grant Funding Reaches Local Councils: Inquiry

Officials from the federal Department of Social Services (DSS) have told a parliamentary committee they do not know how much of its grant funding reaches local governments.

They also said the department has not assessed whether unmet community needs, including homelessness, domestic violence, and emergency relief, are being addressed.

The admission was made during a public hearing of the Standing Committee on Regional Development, Infrastructure and Transport’s Inquiry into local government funding and fiscal sustainability.

Nationals MP Alison Penfold questioned the DSS about the total value of funding paid directly to local governments over the last three financial years

In response, Richard Baumgart, the department’s chief advisor for service delivery, said the department only publicly reports the value of grants awarded in a given year—not the payments actually made, which can be spread across multiple years once a grant is awarded.

“We don’t normally publish payments by individual organisations; rather, we publish the total value of the grant that’s being awarded,” he told the committee, adding that he would need to take on notice the amount actually paid to respective local governments.

The majority of federal funding for local governments is administered through the Department of Infrastructure, rather than the DSS, with more than $3.6 billion (US$2.6 billion) allocated under the Financial Assistance Grant program for 2026–27.

But individual DSS grants are published as separate transactions on GrantConnect, rather than as a consolidated three-year total for local government recipients.

Baumgart cited $16.4 million as having been granted—though not necessarily fully paid out—to local authorities in 2024-25, and said he did not have a figure for the more recent financial year.

When Penfold asked whether DSS had examined the gap between the services local governments said they were being forced to provide and the funding available to them, Baumgart said he was not sure whether the department had assessed unmet need and would need to check.

Pressed on what proportion of DSS grant funding goes to local governments rather than non-government organisations, Baumgart said it was “quite a small number,” but did not have an exact percentage and took the question on notice.

He also noted that the “vast majority” of DSS grants go to non-government organisations rather than local governments.

DSS’s inability to quantify its own funding flows to local government comes as research (pdf) commissioned by the Australian Local Government Association found more than a quarter of Australian councils were rated as having low financial sustainability in 2021-22, with Tasmania recording the highest proportion at 66 percent, followed by Queensland at 43 percent and New South Wales at 32 percent.

The study also found Australian councils were highly dependent on grants from different levels of government to remain solvent.