In September the government announced that half the fund would be dedicated to tourism-related infrastructure, in a bid to help the sector battered first by bushfires and then Covid-19.
Joyce told Guardian Australia the BBRF is “an essential program because it gives some sort of balance back to projects in the regions, the larger geographic area, over the massive political weight that an urban base like Sydney has”.
Joyce said he was “disappointed” at the way regional funding programs had been handled.
“When I was there, we had $272m in the national regional growth fund for projects valued $10m and over, and the rest of $500m [$228m] in the BBRF – now the national regional growth fund has disappeared altogether.”