By Deanne Jeffers
FEDERAL Member for Nicholls, Sam Birrell has pressed the Government to fill what he describes as a “regional funding blackhole” in the 2023 budget. Mr Birrell said regional communities feel abandoned by Labor since being elected, with hundreds of millions of dollars going unspent.
Mr Birrell said, “The budgeted but unspent money is a massive lost opportunity for the regions and sadly there’s no indication Labor will make it up in the May budget.”
“Since the Albanese Government has come in, they’ve scrapped all of the regional funding programs that the Coalition had, including Building Better Regions fund Community Development Grants, and replaced them with nothing,” he said, adding that, “We’ve basically had 12 months without funding for regional investment.”
Research commissioned by the Parliamentary Budget Office confirms that $1.68B was set aside by the Coalition in the 2022-23 budget year for regional programs, but Mr Birrell says since winning government, $795M has disappeared while any new regional funding programmes have not been released with grant guidelines or funding rounds.
Mr Birrell made this announcement at Shepparton Sports Stadium, one of the key projects he would like to see the Government commit funding towards, as well as the Shepparton Bypass, the GV clinical health school, and fixing roads throughout the electorate.
“We didn’t win the election, and we weren’t able to deliver on those funding commitments. But the projects are still very important for this region, and we don’t even have any funding buckets to apply to get them up and get the sod turned on them.”
“Labor is happy to get on with funding its election commitments while the rest of regional Australia is left waiting and wanting, frankly this Government’s shoddy treatment of rural communities in shameful,” said Mr Birrell.
“The May budget must restore funding certainty to regional Australia and prioritise the release of funding to communities who had the funding tap turned off when Labor took office.”
