SHOOTERS Fishers and Farmers Party spokesman for the Hunter John Preston has taken aim at the NSW Government, claiming the local region was largely ignored by Tuesday’s State Budget.
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He believes the snub was ironic, considering Premier Gladys Berejiklian and her full Cabinet’s recent visit to the Upper Hunter.
“As the Budget was presented to Parliament, I remembered the Premier’s words in January, promising to pay special attention to people of regional NSW, with a population numbering well over two million,” Mr Preston said.
“After last week’s visit from Cabinet to Singleton, I assumed the lack of any announcement was just cards being held close to the chest for Budget day.
“As it turned out, the Treasurer delivered a lecture to us all that we never had it so good and the Hunter was treated as a Handmaiden once again to play second fiddle to Sydney, who seemed to live in a parallel universe.
“To add insult to injury, the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Clover Moore, upon whom it rained money, engaged in a spat with the Treasurer over her view as to how billions of dollars in a smorgasbord of freeways, light rail projects and other big ticket items should have been better spent on a different list of pet projects for inner city residents.
“A $12 billion Sydney Metro, a $2.1 billion light rail and a $48 million upgrade to Central Station not being to her liking.
“Meanwhile in the Hunter, we were not invited to lick the plate.
“The sum total of initiatives for the region was barely more than the cost of putting on fireworks on New Year’s Eve on Sydney Harbour.
“The amount allocated to Hunter projects may well be less than what is in the petty cash tins at the WestConnex project.”
Mr Preston admitted he was just “saying what everyone was thinking”.
“It appears that the state government exists only to serve the inner city elites of Sydney,” he said.
“Sydney now seems more imperious than ever as it treats the rest of the state with emotions ranging from disdain to contempt.
“All this in a week where the news arrived that electricity prices would rise up to 19 per cent from next week.
“The Minister for Energy Don Harwin told those who could not afford the increases to go and beg at Service NSW for a rebate, the details of which he could not name as it seems he has no trouble paying his power bill when it falls due.
“We were also reminded of something called the ‘Paris Agreement’, which all the elites who have showered themselves in largesse quoted to justify the cost of electricity going through the roof, which brings me to my next point.
“Speaking of Paris, Queen Marie Antoinette had a similar response to the peasants of France when she learned they had no bread.
“She famously advised ‘Let them eat cake’.
“This is a good time to remind Premier Berijiklian that things did not end well for Marie.
“She was famously executed by guillotine the next year.
“While I am sure the Premier won’t suffer a similar fate, they may find that the modern equivalent gets delivered come March 2019.”
