And lets be honest here it really isn’t largesse because the Singleton Local Government Area (LGA) certainly provides more than its fair share of revenue to Macquarie Street by way of mining royalties.

It’s just that we have to wait for those in the big smoke to redirect that money back to the regions and it seems they are not keen on it giving back to us.

Singleton provides millions and millions of dollars year in year out from mining royalties – we are the epitome of a mining impacted region but our requests for support appear to be falling on deaf ears.

The NSW Minerals Council state that mining royalties will deliver a record $1.8billion in this year alone, and another record $2b next year into the state’s coffers.

Now a large chunk of that amount probably somewhere in the vicinity of 40 per cent will come from Singleton LGA. So in an ideal world one would think some monies would regularly flow back into our region by way of infrastructure spending.

When we missed out on the latest round of funding through the Resources for Regions Program (a program established specifically to assist mining affected communities) the Deputy Premier said Singleton LGA had already received $35 million since 2012 – what should we be grateful for small gifts?

We are not asking for billions just some progress on vital works such as the bypass and upgrades to the New England and Golden highways including their notorious intersection. Plus we need to plan for our future post mining by developing our tourism, education and agriculture sectors.

So it was very depressing to read all about the 2018-19 State Budget and see virtually nothing coming to Singleton by way of new spending.

Have we offended the Coalition Government because in the last couple of budgets we appear to have been forgotten and no doubt many of us thought with an election next year we might have been remembered one more.

Alas that was not the case. It could be argued that if all those $100/child cultural cheques were pooled together something good could be established that was far more lasting – even a local art gallery with some extra funding from the Resources for Regions.

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