'Careful' NSW budget delivers delicate balance

"This is a careful budget in difficult economic times ... every dollar we spend is designed to make sure the state's fundamentals go well while getting NSW ready for a brighter future." - Treasurer Daniel Mookhey

"It's all about the must-haves: investing in essential services and getting the state back on track." - Premier Chris Minns

"The government is squandering its revenue increases on unfunded wage deals." - Opposition Leader Mark Speakman

HOUSING

"I don't think we should be slamming the door on home ownership to the next generation ... NSW needs more homes, more homes for renters, more homes for key workers, more homes for people escaping violence at home." - Mr Mookhey

"The last thing you do in a housing crisis is discourage people from investing in property ... the people who ultimately pay are the small businesses and the residential renters at the end of the line." - Mr Speakman

"The risk here is that policies and funding priorities in this budget kill off or significantly harm the goose that lays the golden eggs." - Urban Taskforce chief executive Stephen Fenn

"We have the opportunity to build more houses, schools and hospitals for NSW, but only if we overhaul the pipeline which is deathly slow and clogged by bureaucratic road blocks." - Civil Contractors Federation NSW chief Kylie Yates

"A record investment for social and affordable housing for our most vulnerable will improve the critical undersupply of housing in this area of the market." - Master Builders Association of NSW executive director Brian Seidler

"With 9000 households on the priority waiting list for social housing, our combined challenge is significant." - Community Housing Industry Association NSW chief executive Mark Degotardi

"If the government failed to take urgent action now, NSW would become an entirely different society within a decade." - McKell Institute chief executive Ed Cavanough

HEALTH

"What (doctors) have told us is that without this, clinics would close and patients would be billed perhaps $20 per visit." - Finance Minister Courtney Houssos on a payroll tax waiver

"This gives GPs across NSW certainty that they can continue to operate and keep their doors open for patients, without fear of being hit with a huge tax bill that will shut them down." - Rebekah Hoffman, chair of the GP college's NSW branch

Australian Associated Press