Member for Parkes Mark Coulton slams federal budget for 2023/2024 as failing to deliver for the regions

"Largely the regions have been left out - the Treasurer didn't mention regional Australia, he didn't mention roads, rail or infrastructure of any sort last night - this is more of a welfare type budget," the Nationals MP said on Wednesday.

"I am a bit concerned that the people in my electorate who are working hard are not really getting much of a benefit."

On Tuesday night, federal treasurer Jim Chalmers handed down his second budget, announcing cost-of-living relief measures and a boost to welfare payments which could benefit about 400,000 regional and rural residents.

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These measures included raising welfare payments by $40 a fortnight, increasing rental assistance by 15 percent and raising the cut-off age for payments for children of single parents from eight to 14.

Although the boost to welfare payments was significantly below the $76 a week that peak social services bodies were calling for, Mr Coulton said "working people" in the electorate would not be pleased with the change.

"When we've got lots of job vacancies I think it's a backwards step to be paying people more not to be at work," he said.

"I'm not talking about people on a disability pension or an old age pension, but an abled person really should be obliged to take up a job that's available."

"So I think working people in my electorate would not be that happy with that aspect of it."

Cost-of-living relief will also be delivered through $1.5 billion in electricity bill relief for 5.5 million households. Pensioners, people on other income support payments and small businesses will have their energy bills subsidised by up to $500.

At the start of the new financial year, parents will also see further subsidies to their childcare costs. For families on a combined income of $80,000 or less Child Care Subsidy rates will lift to 90 percent and will taper down by 1 percentage point for every additional $5,000 of family income.

Mr Coulton said while the childcare subsidies sound good in principle, amidst a shortage of workers in the sector and a lack of centres in some towns, local families might not see much benefit.

"I know of many people wanting to go back to work who can't. Sometimes it's not just about the money, it's making the government understand that, in regional areas, it's about access," he said.

"There's no point having cheaper childcare if there's no services available for you to send your child to. I'll also be speaking to the aged care minister about aged care access in Broken Hill."

"It's one thing to insist on 24/7 registered nurses, but if there's no staff there to fill those positions then we start to have broader issues. My job is to make the government aware of what these decisions actually mean on the ground."

Mr Coulton also expressed concern with cuts to infrastructure funding in the budget.

He said the Roads of Strategic Importance project - which was supposed to fund a road upgrade between Warren and Coonamble - was not mentioned in the budget and said projects like the Inland Rail were being slowed down to put the budget back in black.

"One of the reasons the budget is in surplus is because a lot of the infrastructure projects have either been removed completely or put onto future budgets," he said.

"What we need to know is how far in the future they are because we're starting to see some uncertainty around the grade separation projects on inland rail and other projects like that - we're still working through what all of that means."

"But there is a concern that some of those bigger infrastructure projects are being closely scrutinised."

Another loss for regional areas, Mr Coulton says, is the failure to boost the Stronger Communities Fund grant program above $150,000 for each electorate per year.

"In the overall scheme of things that's not a lot of money. A program like that has enabled our sporting organisations to buy equipment, rotary clubs to buy barbecues - all sorts of things," he said.

"Clearly that's an indication that the government doesn't really trust communities to manage these things themselves."

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