The State Government outraged families and bus operators last month when it announced it was scrapping the school student transport scheme and charging parents up to $90 a year per child.

But in an extraordinary back-flip, Mr Rees admitted on Sunday his government was wrong to cut the subsidy and apologised for the “distress this has caused some families”.

The cuts were set to shave $33 million a year off a scheme that costs the state $470 million annually, but Mr Rees, who is trailing disastrously in the polls, said better than expected budget

figures had given him the flexibility to reintroduce the subsidy.

Michelle Harpley, the president of the Griffith High School P&C, said the reversal of a decision that would have cost some families up to $180 a year just to send their children to school would be warmly welcomed.

“That’s really good news and it’s very big of a politician to admit he’s made a mistake,” Mrs Harpley said.

“A lot of Riverina parents were very concerned and there was a petition online for people to sign, so hopefully that helped change his mind.”

Local Country Labor MLC Tony Catanzariti said Mr Rees’s change of heart showed he was a premier in touch with his constituents.

“The premier is a person who listens to the people and I congratulate him for listening to the people on this issue,” Mr Catanzariti said.

“I’m pleasantly surprised that he eventually came round to doing it and I’m very pleased about it.”

However, Mr Rees’s decision has drawn scorn from the Opposition, with Murrumbidgee MP Adrian Piccoli describing the backdown as “humiliating”.

“It was just a bad decision,” Mr Piccoli said.

“It was wrong on a number of levels – it was an added expense for families who had already lost the school allowance,

it puts students’ safety at risk and it would have worsened traffic congestion around schools.”

But Mr Catanzariti dismissed the Opposition’s comments, describing them as meaningless criticism.

“Instead of coming out and saying ‘Right, fair enough, you saw that it wasn’t what the people wanted and we’re pleased to see you do it’ they are just criticising for criticism’s sake,” he said.