Member For Barwon calls for deep review into regional service delivery

During a question time sitting at the NSW parliament house on May 24, the Member for Barwon, Roy Butler MP, stood before the government and brought up the issues of service delivery in regional communities. In his speech to parliament members, he said the following:

“Firstly, can I congratulate the premier on the formation of government, and I look forward to your attention in regional communities. “Mr Speaker, my question is to the premier, I appreciate the attention of your ministers already to the issues of service delivery in Barwon across the health, education, police, and youth portfolios. Premier, have you had an opportunity to form a view on the adequacy of these services and the need to carry out a deep review and plan to bring Barwon’s and regional NSW services up to an adequate standard?”

In the lead up to his response the NSW premier criticised the former government by saying that the “National Party have largely abandoned regional NSW for the last 12 years”.

The premier stated “that I can report to the house that the Independent Parliamentary Budget Office revealed that there was zero dollars allocated for new and regional roads for the 2022/23 years under the National Party’s election commitments…and in fact their signature policy, Mr Speaker, for the 2019 election, was to take regional road classifications and put them into the NSW governments classifications and they nominated 15,000kms worth of local roads that the state would take responsibility for… they reapplied five kilometres, just five kilometres in Blacktown.”

The NSW premier, Chris Minns, in response to the question from the Member of Barwon said, “Mr Speaker, we regard what the Member for Barwon says seriously, we believe that there is scope in this parliament for this house to look for a review into service delivery for rural and regional communities. I suspect that the house could move to establish a service delivery committee and I can think of no finer member than the Member for Barwon to chair that committee. In fact, government members would support such an application.”

The creation of the committee is yet to be announced and Member of Barwon noted there haven’t been any “firm discussions” since the premier’s remarks.