New Gunnedah hospital a priority for state budget: MP

The NSW state government is due to hand down its budget on Tuesday.

Australia is in recession, and the government is anticipated to make a big-spending effort to stimulate the economy back into growth.

Treasurer Dominic Perrottet has repeatedly flagged the state would run a deficit, partly in order to finance new infrastructure spending.

Tamworth MP Kevin Anderson said he was fighting to ensure the region got its fair share of state funding.

Asked to lay out his biggest local priorities Mr Anderson identified the massive Gunnedah hospital upgrade, plus a number of regional road upgrades, including Rangari Road.

"I would like to see planning money in there for that particular project [the Gunnedah hospital]," he said.

"We've done significant work on the clinical services plan, and now we need money to look at what does a redeveloped Gunnedah hospital look like."

The MP said he's been fighting to fully fund the upgrade of Rangari Road.

The project would cost $12.9 million, but state government so far has promised to fund just $9 million.

"I would like to see a top up of that, and if that's still not enough I will just keep pushing.

"There's money there now, $9 million - which is a significant amount of money - to start work on that road."

The budget would reflect a year's work including a number of already-announced projects like the Dungowan Dam upgrade and Chaffey Dam pipeline, he said.

"You could put up an argument and say let's hold all that back that money and announce it on budget day.

"It would be a really, really big budget announcement.

"But no what I want to do is see these projects move when the opportunity's there."

State budgets are usually made public in June, but the 2020 budget was delayed to November 17 during the COVID-19 crisis.

State revenue is expected to have been heavily affected by the pandemic, likely costing the budget bottom line tens of billions of dollars.

Mr Anderson also threw his support behind constructing additional public or community housing for the Tamworth region.