Under budgetry pressure and balancing election promises, NSW Treasurer Daniel Mookhey has been walking that fine line.

$5.4 Billion dollars is going to families, with more childcare and innovations such as co-locating with existing primary school land.  If you want to get over the Blue Mountains however, the traditional carpark bottleneck around Blackheath will be a permanent feature and any chance of going to one of the Northern Beaches should be left to a grey day in winter as all tunneling has been canned.  Also canned is the very fast train.

Nurses and Teachers get to take home more pay in a bid to stem shortages.

The Parramatta tram gets more funding but it may have come at the expense of the Powerhouse Museum whose capital budget just got halved.

Dammed if you don’t, all major dam works have been scrapped for dams like Warragamba and Wyangala which will leave the increasing population short of water in the newly proclaimed El Nino, and Nepean residents vulnerable to more regular floods

Image: Very Fast Train Axed in Budget. Image : Shutterstock – Petar B photography

Produced By: Roderick Chambers

Featured In Story: Jessica Rudd – Parenthood CEO

First aired on The Wire, Tuesday 19 September 2023