This week's live televised candidate debate on Sky News pitting Labor's Hunter candidate, Dan Repacholi, up against the Nats' James Thomson, One Nation's Dale McNamara and host Laura Jayes, was a world away from the 2019 election, when the Coalition all but muzzled its local candidates from talking to the media.
Back in 2019, the Nats and Libs wanted to make sure their candidates in unwinnable seats didn't say anything controversial which could hurt the national campaign.
Three years later, at least one of the region's seats is not looking so unwinnable and the Nats have given Thomson a relatively long leash.
So it came to pass that we witnessed two relative political novices going toe to toe on big-party climate and energy policy on live TV.
Repacholi was on the back foot at times during the Sky debate over Labor's emissions reduction policy, and Thomson was a surprisingly forceful presence next to the pistol-shooting colossus.
One wag declared Jayes the winner, but Election Diary is nominating democracy the winner after the silencing of candidates last time.
High hopes
Just how big is Dan Repacholi?
The five-time Olympian has been pictured in recent weeks standing back-to-back with Albo and senator Jenny McAllister and talking to Wallsend state MP Sonia Hornery.
For the record, he's 202cm tall (or six-foot-eight) and weighs 140 kilos.
Remarkably, he claimed to have found a "doppelganger" in Singleton on ANZAC Day when he bumped into Soldier On Australia rep Kevin Lomax.
On your mark
The start of pre-poll voting on Monday is a significant milestone in the campaign.
More than 40 per cent of voters in Hunter and Paterson cast their ballots before polling day in 2019. Just over a quarter of electors in Newcastle and Shortland (27 per cent) voted early last time.
It appears unlikely the major parties will make significant funding promises after many people have started lodging their ballots.
In the clear
The unhappy case of Despi O'Connor, the independent Climate 200 candidate for Flinders who has suspended her campaign after legal advice suggested she was ineligible, prompted questions about the status of some candidates in the Hunter.
O'Connor, who is also a local councillor in Victoria's Mornington Peninsula, has been on leave without pay as a primary school teacher with the Victorian education department but has been told she should have resigned before nominating.
Under section 44 of the Constitution, candidates must not hold "any office of profit under the Crown".
In 1992, the High Court found in Sykes v Cleary that independent Phil Cleary was ineligible to run in Bob Hawke's old seat of Wills because his permanent employment as a teacher amounted to an office of profit under the Crown, even though he was on leave without pay.
A quick scan of candidates in the Hunter shows about half a dozen who list their occupation as nurses, teachers or employees of government authorities.
In Newcastle, Liberal Katrina Wark is a nurse and the Greens' Charlotte McCabe is a school teacher.
Wark assured Election Diary she had resigned from her job with NSW Health.
The Greens' head office said the party was satisfied that McCabe was eligible.
"Charlotte McCabe is an educator but has no current contract with any government body or organisation," a spokesperson said.
"Prior to her nomination as the Greens candidate for Newcastle she took on irregular casual work in government and non-government schools."
O'Connor told ED that section 44 of the Constitution supported "white privileged people" who had the money to run for office and potentially disadvantaged women who worked in public sector roles such as teaching and nursing.
Keeping it real
Barnaby Joyce has emerged as a clear leader in the Best Quote of the Campaign competition after a visit to the saleyards outside Singleton this week.
Asked about a regional newspaper campaign calling on the government to subsidise publishers for the rising cost of newsprint, Barnaby said: "We must have a vibrant fourth estate, otherwise I can get away with anything."
Divide and conquer
Speaking of Barnaby, ED asked him this week what he thought of Labor preferencing the Greens at number two on senate how-to-vote cards in Newcastle, Shortland and the rest of the state but shunting them down to number four in the "mining" electorates of Hunter and Paterson.
"It's a political ploy. They know the people in the area have a problem with the Greens," the DPM said.
Of course, both sides are not immune to accusations of peddling different stories in different parts of the country. Just ask Matt Canavan.
But, as one conservative insider told ED, the contradiction is easier to get away with when you're in a two-party coalition.
More positives
Independent Stuart Bonds is the latest local candidate to end up in iso after testing positive for you-know-what.
Bonds should be back out and about this weekend.
Leaders go missing
How is the campaign ad spend tracking in the Hunter?
University of Queensland's election ad data dashboard shows the Hunter electorate is no longer among the top 30 in the country for party spending on Facebook.
It's hard to know what, if anything, to read into that, but neither party leader has set foot in the region in three weeks.
In the PM's case, he hasn't been back since his ill fated visit to Edgeworth Tavern on April 6.
