Listeners of Flow's Country Viewpoint program have been inundated with spokespeople addressing the needs of regional and remote Australia when it comes to critical new infrastructure builds over the past year.
One advocate in that space is the Federal Member for Mayo, Rebekha Sharkie, who appeared on the program recently discussing the the Australian Government's Growing Regions Program.
The Federal Government committed $600 million over three years for the program, though Sharkie told Country Viewpoint listeners the government fell short of spending the amount of money it should have committed in the latest round of funding.
"During the estimates process in round one of this, there's 300 million that the government set aside, the government chose only 40 out of 311 suitable applications, so they underspent in this program," Sharkie said.
"The government chose to only use $206 million out of that $300 million that was allocated.
"They (Australian Government) received over $1.4 billion worth of applications and these were approved, department approved saying yes, they met the criteria, that was 313 projects.
Sharkie emphasised that it was a massively missed opportunity in her view for regional Australia and for her electorate, Mayo, which received just one single approved project.
"My concern was that that's $93 million just going to go back into general revenue and not to be spent to the residents," Sharkie said.
"It's frustrating that there's so many really worthy projects across regional Australia that could have gone into that round one that didn't.
"Only one was approved in Mayo."
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