Independent Member for Barwon Roy Butler says this year’s NSW Budget, handed down by Treasurer Daniel Mookhey, was not a great result for regional communities, and is calling on the state government to guarantee regional New South Wales a minimum 33 per cent share of the budget.
Butler said he had been expecting austerity measures going into this year’s budget given the state government’s debt position.
“It’s not a great budget, when you’d think there was going to be some austerity measures based on the fact that the government’s seemingly in debt and they’re trying to claw their way back out of debt into surplus,” Butler said.
Butler said the core issue was the gap between the share of the state’s population living in regional areas and the share of the budget actually allocated to those communities.
“We know that about 33 per cent of people in New South Wales are in regional areas. However, it is far, far less than 33 per cent of the state budget that actually gets allocated to regional communities,” he said.
Regional and rural New South Wales is home to more than a third of the state’s population and covers more than 95 per cent of the state’s land mass, according to the state government’s own budget papers.
Butler said the state government should commit to a 33 per cent funding floor for regional communities as a starting point, before then addressing legacy issues around ageing regional infrastructure.
“I believe that the state should be allocating 33 per cent as a start for regional communities, and then looking at addressing some of those legacy issues around ageing infrastructure and topping it up based on that,” he said.
He pointed to major metropolitan infrastructure projects, including Sydney’s tunnel and rail projects, as a key reason regional areas were missing out, arguing cost overruns on those projects were consuming funds that could otherwise be directed to the regions.
“This idea that these projects in the metro, the tunnels, these big billion dollar projects that just swallow up money, whoever has money, they’re taking the dollars because they’ve got cost overruns, and as a result regional communities are missing out,” Butler said.
“So let’s start with 33 per cent of state money going to regional communities.”
This article appeared on Back Country Bulletin on 29 June 2026.
