A total of $188 million was slashed from the Department of Enterprise, Investment and Trade’s budget on 8 March 2023 as part of the Pre-election Budget Update.
These include cuts to:
- Post, Digital and Visual Effects Rebate and Made in NSW Fund
- Destination NSW Consumer Marketing, Sport Fixture fund & Policy, Product & Engagement Budget
- Blockbusters Funding Initiative
- Investment NSW Future Economy Fund and Jobs Plus Program Research Acceleration and Attraction Program and Small Business Innovation & Research Program and the Bushfire Response R&D Mission
The cuts to trade, innovation, tourism, and screen programs have repercussions for more than a dozen programs coordinated by Investment NSW, Destination NSW, and Create NSW, reducing funding to many programs and cancelling others.
The discovery of these previously unannounced, pre-election cuts have placed additional budget challenges.
Since forming government in March, we have been up front with the people of NSW about the economic challenges we have inherited from the former government.
They also handed over to us the largest debt in our state’s history, with the state on track for a record $187.5 billion in debt.
We can’t fix a decade of failure and wrong priorities from the former government overnight.
But we are working hard to repair the budget in a responsible way, while helping to ease cost-of-living and rebuilding our essential services – what we were elected to do.
Minister Graham said:
"We are alerting the public to these undisclosed pre-election cuts, largely to business, innovation and screen.
“We have inherited significant economic difficulties from the former government, including cut and unfunded programs.”
“We need to make tough calls and reprioritise spending to protect what we can while we focus on funding critical measures such as teachers, nurses and tackle the cost-of-living crisis. We’re getting on with fixing the mess we’ve been left.
Minister Chanthivong said:
“The extent of this mismanagement has been revealed today.
“We are facing a tough economic outlook and parting gifts like these from the former government only make it tougher. Unlike the former government, we’ll be upfront with people in NSW about the tough decisions needed to rebuild essential services and get the state back on track.