RURAL ROUND-UP: 'City-centric' budget mixed bag for bush

“Overall it's a bit of a mixed bag for agriculture and rural and regional communities,” she said.

“When you compare the amount of funding allocated to our roads and rail, which is about $400 million, with the amount that is being allocated to the city and coast is in the hundreds of billions. I think many people in regional NSW could quite rightly feel a little bit ignored.”

“Farmers need efficient transport routes, whether road or rail, and that is what we are missing at the moment in rural and regional NSW.”

Key initiatives for freight infrastructure and services announced in budget include, $77 million to support productivity and safety for road freight in country NSW.

This includes extending the Bridges for the Bush program to upgrade or replace critical bridges as well as building and upgrading truck rest areas.

The projects will comprise of $2.5 million for pavement rebuilding on the Castlereagh Highway 2km north of Coonamble, $1 million pavement widening on Kamilaroi Highway east of Brewarrina and $1.5 million for pavement resurface on the Mitchell Highway at various locations.

Ms Simson said the continuation of the Bridges for the Bush campaign and improvements to rural railway would help regional NSW, but said the funding was not sufficient.

“Some of those programs will help open up and maintain transport routes for farmers to get their produce off their farms and to port. But its just no where near enough.”

Part of the overall five year $277 million program of work which began in 2012-13, a further $44 million will be allocated to continue the maintenance and upgrade of grain rail lines in country NSW, helping to ease loading times for trains moving grain to ports.

$6 million will be set aside to commence a program of rail infrastructure upgrades at key sites on the Country Regional Network.

These works will also lengthen sidings to reduce or eliminate delays caused by shunt trains that do not fit into shorter sidings.

Since coming to office in March 2011 Minister Gay and the NSW Liberals and Nationals had invested $139 million to maintain and upgrade the state’s grain lines to attract more bulk freight onto rail and help ease pressure on country roads.

These infrastructure improvements include 972 kilometres of track resurfaced, 50 new low-maintenance bridges and culverts being built and 57 kilometres of new heavy rail track from Armatree to Coonamble.

“We also rolled out the Grain Harvest Scheme, giving trucks transporting grain a five per cent mass limit concession during the 2013-14 harvest and helping farmers move grain from paddock to aggregation sites on the rail network more efficiently,” Minister Gay said.

Road freight in rural and regional NSW will see a massive boost in the near future as part of the Restart NSW, including $37.5 million for the Fixing Country Roads program, a joint partnership between councils and industry to identify and prioritise projects to eliminate missing links for high productivity trucks on local and regional roads.

Member for Barwon, Kevin Humphries said the government delivered on its promise to improve rural infrastructure.

“The 2014-15 budget delivers on the NSW liberals and Nationals governments commitment to boost infrastructure and services in Barwon with significant investments in health and roads.”

Orana regional development association (RDA) chair John Walkom, said from a regional perspective the budget is very strong.

“We've got money allocated to good economic projects that will drive the economy, create jobs, therefore creating economic prosperity in communities and increase productivity.”

Mr Walkom said the $6 million rail infrastructure upgrades as part of the Country Regional Network will allow grain producers to become more competitive both locally and internationally.

“The upgrades will increase productivity and reduce the costs of freight movements which permits us to be more competitive, allowing agriculture to compete in the global market.”

Improvements to the state’s grain lines is a significant win for country NSW and farmers.

“Farmers are the producers of agricultural products which drive the economy,” Mr Walkom said.