Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 20, we will get to find out whether new NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian does things a little different from Mike Baird.
That’s when her treasurer, Dominic Perrottet, will deliver the state government’s 2017-18 budget.
From where we are in the south west corner of Western Sydney, we will be watching closely to see if Berejiklian will go down a different path from her predecessor.
Baird’s government treated our neck of the woods with contempt, closing down essential services such as motor registries or historic schools [Hurlstone] or refusing to allocate a few dollars for things like a lift at Macquarie Fields railway station.
Appin Road is another cross against the government, which has been in office for six years and all it has offered us on that deadly stretch are band-aid solutions.
I am not sure why, but under Baird the state government seemed to only be interested in the areas where its biggest supporters lived – inner city, eastern suburbs and the north shore.
If they would just asked the guy who won government for them in 2011, Barry O’Farrell, he would say to them: you forget Western Sydney at your own electoral peril.
And it’s true: no party can muster a majority to govern without winning a stack of Western Sydney seats.
Under Baird, pundits, me included, had started predicting the end of the government at the next election, due in March 2019.
The State Government is awash with surplus cash, thanks to the property boom and runaway stamp duty collections.
In last year’s budget, another bumper surplus, the state government refused to come to the party and spend on badly needed infrastructure.
I am sure they don’t need to be reminded that state governments aren’t there to make money out of tax collecting.
The deal is this: they collect taxes from us and then turn around and spend it on things that are needed across NSW so communities can get on with it.
Things like a lift at all rail stations should be taken for granted in this day and age.
Gladys Berejiklian, out here in the west, we will be keenly watching your treasurer deliver the budget tomorrow.
