A secondary road costs the same per Km whether there's 10 houses on it or 100. The same for other services. There are economies of scale in the provision of services and infrastructure. The State spends more per capita to provide basic services to people on areas with lower population densities.
That's always the way it's been and that's the way it should be, unless we want everyone to live in large towns and cities and rural areas to be deserted. I've no problem with that, if anything I think we should be spending more on rural areas, especially smaller towns and larger villages, in order to keep them viable economically and socially.