State Budget analysis indicates funding boost

Published: 09 December 2020. (Note: information was correct at date of publication but may have since been changed or superseded.)

A Council analysis of the 2020-21 State Budget handed down last week has revealed the Cairns region received its highest allocation of capital works expenditure in nine years.

The State Budget allocated $750 million in capital works for the Cairns region, an 18 per cent increase on last financial year’s allocation of $633 million.

There is a strong emphasis on road projects, including $108 million for Stage 3 and 4 of the Bruce Highway (Cairns Southern Access Corridor) upgrade, and $42 million for the Smithfield Bypass.

The capital expenditure for Cairns equates to $2,955 per person, the third highest per capita budgeted spend of any region in Queensland, behind only the Outback and Central Queensland regions.

While the 2020-21 budget increase was welcome, analysis of State Government budgeted direct capital expenditure at a regional level over the past nine years, indicates that per capita, Cairns remains the lowest of any region outside of Greater Brisbane and the Gold Coast.

For example, had the Cairns region received the same per capita allocation as the Central Queensland region over the nine-year period to 2020/21, Cairns would have received an additional $3.62 billion in direct State capital expenditure/investment.

“While we would still argue there is a fair bit of catching up to do, we certainly welcome the substantial capital investment being made by the Queensland Government in our region in 2020-21,” Mayor Bob Manning said.

“We’d obviously like to see this level of expenditure sustained with investment in the major long-term infrastructure projects, such as Council’s new water treatment plant, that are critical for our city’s and our region’s long-term growth and prosperity.”