The man who hopes to be the next premier of NSW, Opposition leader Chris Minns, was in Newcastle on Monday to talk up Labor's policies on domestic manufacturing and vocational training.
The Newcastle Herald took the opportunity to sit down with the member for Kogarah to ask him about his views on issues relating to the Hunter.
The following is an edited transcript of the interview:
Herald: The next government will have a decision to make about whether to bring Supercars back to Newcastle for another five years. What's your view?
Minns: I think it's a great local event. I've always thought that. My understanding is it's with the council, who are looking at the next iteration of it. We want to work with the council and make sure we get big events and big opportunities for the Hunter. I assume that'd be one of them."
Herald: Hunter Park is a potentially game-changing redevelopment of a sporting and leisure precinct. The government has not released a business case since announcing it six years ago. What's your take on that?
Minns: Well, we need to get that business case out. When the business case is revealed to us, if we were to win the election, but more so importantly to industry and community leaders in the Hunter, you can't have a situation where such an important piece of the firmament, the infrastructure of the community, has this big question mark over it and there's secret reports that are sitting around on government desks. We need to have the information in front of us so people understand the basis and reason for the decisions being made.
Herald: Social and affordable housing supply is a huge issue in the Hunter. The social housing stock in Newcastle is ageing. What will a Labor government do about it?
Minns: In the old days, the story was always Sydney's really expensive but the regions at least are liveable and you can get value for money in the regions. That is not the case any more. If you look at rents, in particular, there are spikes being recorded in regional communities far exceeding what many parts of Sydney are seeing.
It is, in fact, in many parts of NSW more acute in some regional communities. The main reason for that is, unlike in Sydney, if you regrettably get moved out of your suburb, there's potentially opportunities in the neighbouring suburb. That's not going to be the case if you're in a place like Maitland and Cessnock where the next town might be half an hour, 45 minutes away. The kids have to get taken out of school. A complete disruption to every aspect of life because of the lack of housing.
We've announced initiatives in relation to first home buyers, changes to renting to rebalance the negotiation between a renter and a landlord, but really supply is going to be a big part of this. We've announced that on government land that is developable 30 per cent will go to social, community and affordable housing. That is consistent with Paris and London and other jurisdictions around the world.
We think we can start to make a dent, particularly for those that are in acute stress as a result of the housing shortage.
Herald: Does this require more direct investment from the government?
Minns: We're open to direct investment. Landcom still plays a valuable and important role in providing a pipeline, a future supply of housing, for Sydney in particular but also in the regions.
I think they've been neglected for a long time. They need to be reinvigorated.
Herald: Dominic Perrottet has been announcing billions of dollars in grants for western Sydney under the WestInvest fund, but the government has pledged very little for the Hunter. Is that good enough?
Minns: We're obviously big critics of the way he's been distributing grants in NSW for a long time, whether it was the Stronger Communities grants, solar trials for schools, and a lot of sporting grants seem to be politically influenced as well.
We're trying to build in stabilisers and integrity measures in terms of grant distribution. For instance, they all have to be made public: no secret grants.
Our point would be we want to make sure we're in a position where we're giving resources and grants to regions based not on interference but based on need, and not the political needs of the government.
We've announced a whole lot of integrity measures related to that.
Second point here is we've got some very tough, very aggressive members of Parliament who represent Newcastle electorates. If they're re-elected on March 25, then they're going to have sharp elbows making sure this community gets its fair share.
If you speak to Yasmin or Tim or Sonia, they'll say this community's been neglected for the last 10 years and they've got obligations to this community to make sure that infrastructure that's required to grow the economy and is consistent with the taxpayers and the tax paid in this community is fair and consistent.
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