But first of all, a comment on how the pork barrelling - or should that be the cargo cult mentality - was at work in expectations of millions of dollars worth of infrastructure projects being lavished on the electorate.

This always strikes me as a misguided way of looking at state or federal budgets, because if one electorate scores big time, others will of necessity miss out.

I guess those of this mindset aren't overly concerned with equally sharing the goodies around.

The morning after the budget was handed down, our local news read: "Hospitals across the Wagga electorate have emerged as the big winners with millions of dollars in works from the 2019-20 NSW Budget handed down on Tuesday afternoon." (Daily Advertiser, June 19)

Never mind that the budget failed to address many of the big issues that actually impact on real people, including climate change, homelessness and domestic violence - though by some urgent backpedalling this latter issue was belatedly addressed, in a small way.

As Greens MP David Shoebridge pointed out: "The Greens would choose to put well-being and sustainability at the heart of our budget. We'd put community and the environment ahead of big business and developers."

However, a follow up to the hospitals story gave me my focus for today's column, which is education.

Though, I will explore it in a more broadly meaningful way than the DA's story read, which was that "some of the state's fastest growing regional suburbs, located north of Wagga, have to receive a dollar figure for a planned new school."

What caught my attention was the realisation that, according to the budget, the state's public schools will need to justify their funding by proving that they are lifting standards.

To ensure that taxpayers are getting value for money, Treasurer Dominic Perrottet said education would be the first government department that will need to have a clear focus on outcomes.

This is clearly putting politics into the classroom, and is therefore something that should not go unchallenged.

It beats me how state public schools that have been underfunded for years and that take the vast majority of disadvantaged children are expected to achieve the outcomes the state government demands.

I was also dismayed that education had been chosen as the first cab off the rank for this new form of favouring those who are already favoured.

Which brings me to the other very worrying education aspect of the budget, which is its record expenditure on private schools - a rank betrayal of the Gonski plan.

Hidden among admittedly much-needed increases in public school funding is a massive increase in private school money.

This is preventing NSW from meeting its Gonski funding commitments to public schools.

This budget featured another 7.5 per cent increase in recurrent expenditure to private schools, bringing state government spending to $1.4 billion in the 2019-20 budget. Private schools have now received a 15 per cent funding increase from the NSW government in just the last two years.

The NSW Government needs to meet at least 75 per cent of the resource needs of public schools to enable it to meet minimum Gonski standards. But even with increased expenditure, it will only meet 71 per cent of this in 2019-20.

"Meanwhile, this budget means the NSW government is providing more than 25 per cent of the resource needs of private schools, when its long-term commitment is to just 20 per cent under the National Education Agreement," David Shoebridge noted.

Even with the increased funding to public schools in this budget, the NSW government is still billions short in funding for public schools.

It's an absolute disgrace that while public school students continue to suffer in demountable classrooms and hold outdoor assemblies because they don't have a hall, the state government has billions to give to private schools.