The Prime Minister and Treasurer justified their socially unfair budget on a claimed but in fact non-existent budget crisis, and his NSW counterparts of Messrs Baird and Constance have tried to claim we will all benefit from a sale of public assets and a massive infrastructure spend.

Unfortunately, is it nothing more than a con job. The NSW Liberal/National Coalition must think the people, especially we regional/rural ones, came down with the last shower.

On June 18, The Daily Advertiser noted that of the $114 million for the Wagga electorate only a paltry $5 million, for the Gocup Road, can be classed as “new” money. In other words, other spends have previously been allocated and are not new at all.

How Mr Maguire can be “happy” (DA, June 18), with this is beyond belief.

In relation to the sale of public assets, as many have noted, once some short-term income has been generated the state will be without this previous source of income and, at the same time, will be hit with more costs.

Revenue losses include funds from the abolition of a number of transfer and duty taxes, poker machine tax concessions to clubs, port privatisation, and the well-publicised electricity network privatisation, which will result in huge income losses.

Ill-advised or non-existent spending announcements are too numerous to cite in the word length of this column, but transport, for example, is a big loser.

Though metropolitan infrastructure is trumpeted to the rooftops, regional areas miss out yet again, with no funding for public transport.

Education is also a big loser, TAFE especially. 

There are cuts of a further $56 million, while at the same time private providers receive a huge funding increase.

Child protection and social housing are also poorly served, and the government has again failed to deliver on funding for public libraries – the subsidy to local government has remained unchanged since 1997.

Environment funding stands still, with no extra money for environmental protection.

Climate change mitigation is also poor, with no boost for clean energy generation.

In effect, this is an election-year budget focused on headline-grabbing project announcements while ignoring regional NSW and its impacts on services and the environment.