Narromine Shire mayor Craig Davies calls out government for not having a plan for rural roads

This is the question Narromine Shire mayor Craig Davies is asking as he watches his region's roads fall apart, with not enough funding to fix them.

The mayor has called on the government to provide extra funding for roads in rural New South Wales.

Speaking with the Daily Liberal from an airport in Sydney, Mr Davies explained he'd recently had meetings with four different political entities about roads funding, not just for the Narromine Shire but rural NSW in general.

"We are seeing roads collapse, right from the major highways to barely used rural roads," he said.

Mr Davies was surprised to see the amount of infrastructure spending happening in Sydney.

"The amount of infrastructure spending down here is just incredible and a significant amount of that needs to be diverted to rural roads to allow us to carry on with our principal activity and that's agriculture," he said.

The mayor called out the government for not having a plan for rural roads over the next two to five years.

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"The infrastructure spend that will occur on roads out here to bring them to a level that's acceptable is a multi billion dollar spend," he said.

"We are not seeing that level of funding, but we are seeing multi billion dollar developments in Sydney on a very regular basis."

Upon driving to the airport, Mr Davies spotted a new overpass.

"You've got to wonder 'why?' sometimes. Do they have to spend this money?" he said.

"If that's the case, rural NSW is the ideal place to make that investment right now."

The further you drive out of Dubbo, the smaller the population becomes in certain government areas. This shouldn't stop large amounts of funding being given to those places though, Mr Davies said.

"If you look at a shire like Bourke, it's got thousands of kilometres of roads and they've got a tiny population," he said.

"The funding needs to be significant amounts of money so we can get some bigger contractors to come in and just get this work done.

"Our local contractors would never be able to keep up with it."

With the wet weather causing further damage to the regions roads, Mr Davies said his council's main focus would be bringing them back up to standard over the next two to five years.

"Even in the streets of the towns we've got potholes where we've never had potholes," he said.

While community parks and facilities upgrades have been the focus for the Narromine Shire, Mr Davies said the focus "has to be on roads" but he asks for the community's patience as they work on them.

"There is no point trying to fix roads up under these conditions," he said.

"You are just throwing good money after bad and the last thing we want to do is waste money on projects of that nature."

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