Bitter budget from the Liberals and Nationals

Flooded roads in Florida due to sea level rise

Member for Ballina, Tamara Smith MP and Greens NSW Spokesperson for the North Coast says that whilst this budget delivers some of the bare bones of some of the LNP election commitments for the seat of Ballina, it locks the north coast into a continued cycle of roads infrastructure backlog and it ignores life on a warming planet.


 "The Deputy Premier Yesterday said that regional communities are at the heart of this year's budget - I think a spleen would be a more apt metaphor. We exist but we are expendable."

"The NRMA said last year that Byron Shire has a $70 million dollar backlog in local roads maintenance. The $25 million dollars for road repairs for Byron Shire in the budget barely touches the surface! The fact that the Nationals are calling this line item a "Sustainable Tourism Fund" reads like a scene from the
political satire Utopia - how is it sustainable exactly? Being drip fed inadequate amounts of tax payers' dollars by a patriarchal government is not giving us independence to "sustain" our community!"

"80 million before 2023 for the new Emergency Department upgrade at Ballina Hospital is so overdue it is utterly embarrassing. We should have had a new hospital for Ballina a decade ago and community have been subsisting with a brown field, staged development with staff and patients suffering for many
years and all we know is that the next stage will happen before the next election.
 
Am I too cynical to suggest that it may even form an election promise for the LNP in the lead up to the 2023 election?"

"The robbing of the future to pay for trinkets in the present takes the cake though. This financial year straight up there is 2.3 Billion dollars for 2 sports stadium upgrades in Sydney. Those 2 line items alone are being funded at12 times the total amount being spent across the whole of NSW over the next 4 years for solar and battery technology for consumers to access (mostly through
loans)."

"There is zero climate cost analysis in this budget; 300 million dollars being spent from the Climate Resilience Fund but we have no idea what on and there is nothing in the budget that addresses our emissions reduction target of zero
emissions by 2030."

"When we see that over the ditch Jacinda Adern's government has just introduced a budget that is based on a "living standards framework" that measures the health of people and the environment, the strengths of communities and the prosperity of the nation, we can be forgiven for wishing we had a government that supported our happiness and wellbeing into the future."


TAMARA SMITH MP
Member for Ballina
Media Release
19 June 2019