The federal government's Budget has received a tick from Business NSW for its investment in skills training and tax relief and concessions for business.
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However the council's Western representative Vicki Seccombe, whose patch stretches from Lithgow about 1,000km west to Broken Hill, was disappointed with the lack of infrastructure spending in the region.
"This is the biggest Budget to focus on business in a long time, and we're pleased with the investment into business and things like JobMaker and getting young people into work," Ms Seccombe said.
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"All those jobs that were lost we need to recreate, because if we don't get people back up and into work they can become the long-term unemployed.
"That is our skills force of the future, and we need a pipeline of workers coming through."
She described the Budget as the "start of the rebuild, moving into next wave from the emergency, to get us going again".
"Infrastructure remains a critical pillar for our local economic recovery, with the Newell Highway, Dubbo Bridge, Parkes Bypass and the Wyangala Dam all receiving funding.
"[But] there could have been more focus on infrastructure for our region, there's not a huge amount in the infrastructure space."
Ms Seccombe believes the secret to the future economic success of Orange lies in being able to get people from Sydney here in less than three hours, which would require many billions of funding to completely re-shape the Great Western Highway the whole way through the mountains.
Although $2.5 billion of state government money is being invested on duplicating the stretch from Katoomba to Lithgow, Ms Seccombe said the goal had to be having cars travel at 80-100km/h from the Sydney base of the Blue Mountains through to Lithgow.
She also said that the new airport in Western Sydney would make a vast difference to food producers, who will be able to "get their product out of the plains really quickly".
Overall, Ms Seccombe said the Budget "will be warmly supported by the business community as we look forward to a more optimistic operating environment in coming months".
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