The Coalition has promised more than 100 new programs to create jobs and economic growth in the regions, but Tuesday's budget included no announcements for forced public service workforce relocations.

Former Nationals leaders Barnaby Joyce and Fiona Nash had talked up the 2018-19 budget process as a milestone in a whole-of-government decentralisation agenda led by the minor Coalition partner, building on Mr Joyce's controversial move of the government's pesticides authority to his New England electorate.