If Tuesday's budget announcement of $268 million for the Muswellbrook bypass sounded vaguely familiar, you're spot on.
The NSW Coalition government promised to fund (with taxpayers' money, of course) the then $266 million road before the 2019 election and has been sprinkling a few million here and there to design and refine the project.
Now the federal Coalition, facing an election next month, has promised to pay for the road instead as part of its $750 million pledge to the Hunter under a new Energy Security and Regional Development Plan (ESRDP) announced on budget day.
Whether the feds deserve credit for funding a project already promised by their state party colleagues three years ago will be up to voters in the Hunter electorate.
Deputy PM Barnaby Joyce, who is flirting with a visit to the region next week, also announced on Tuesday that the ESRDP would allocate $100 million to help Port of Newcastle establish a hydrogen manufacturing hub.
The Herald noted on budget day that the government has not yet said where the Hunter's other $382 million ESRDP funds will be spent. What price some of it forming a campaign war chest for the Coalition as it tries to flip some of the region's Labor-held seats?
Libs still waiting
The Libs still haven't named a Newcastle candidate, almost a week after their federal executive appointed Scott Morrison, Dominic Perrottet and former party president Christine McDiven to take charge of outstanding preselections in NSW.
Brooke Vitnell and Nell McGill were preselected unopposed last year in Paterson and Shortland and both have been campaigning for months with some high-profile help from cabinet ministers and the PM himself.
Election Diary has heard up to four party members have nominated for the unenviable job of trying to oust Newcastle MP Sharon Claydon from the 12th-safest Labor seat in the nation.
The factional warfare engulfing the Libs in NSW is hurting the party at a time when it needs every vote in a host of key marginal seats.
The three-person committee was expected to announce its candidates by Friday, the day before its six-day tenure over the NSW division was due to expire, but no decisions had been made by the time ED went to press.
Back for more
ED understands the PM could be in Newcastle next week, kicking the tyres on his $100 million hydrogen splurge and talking up the propects of Ms Vitnell and Ms McGill.
It's been a while since Newcastle was among a national leader's first ports of call during an election campaign.
Harbouring ambitions
Port of Newcastle execs were no doubt doing backflips after Joyce announced on Tuesday that they were getting a hundred mill for the hydrogen hub.
The port's strategic project director, Ross Cadell, was preselected midway through last year to run as a senate candidate for the Nats.
Cadell has COVID and won't be out of iso until Monday.
He'll be taking unpaid leave from the port when the campaign starts and won't be back if the Nats win 28 per cent of the senate vote in NSW.
The PM has said he won't call the election this weekend, and Cadell says he won't be surprised if he pushes the vote back to May 21, later than the May 7 and 14 dates being bandied around in the media.
Numbering up
The drums are beating that Labor and Meryl Swanson are feeling safer in Paterson than they did a few weeks ago and perhaps the Libs have more hope in Shortland. Watch this space.
