The Newcastle Herald welcomes Chris Minns to Newcastle for the first time as Premier.
We hope it's the start of a beautiful relationship.
Mr Minns will be the keynote speaker at a Business Hunter and University of Newcastle event at City Hall on Wednesday night.
His government and his four Hunter cabinet ministers have been at the wheel for 15 months, and the jury is out on whether the region is benefiting from its staunch support for Labor at the ballot box.
The Hunter will want to know that he can see beyond the Hawkesbury.
Labor's time in power has coincided with an inflation and interest-rate crunch that has pounded household budgets but failed to stop the rise in property and rental prices.
At the same time, the Hunter's unemployment rate is just 3 per cent, one percentage point below the state and national levels. The region's once-high jobless rate has morphed into a labour shortage.
Mr Minns and his government have little influence over the macroeconomic climate, but are trying to address housing supply with interventions in the planning system.
It remains to be seen if these succeed in making housing more affordable in the Hunter, but, as Treasurer Daniel Mookhey has said, doing nothing is not an option.
The Hunter's challenges are numerous: a public housing waiting list of more than 5000; alarming rates of domestic violence; an economy facing a massive transition away from coal; school, health and child-protection systems under pressure; and inadequate public transport.
The government has allocated money for new schools at Huntlee and Medowie and will establish 14 new preschools in the Hunter.
This month's budget also reserved funds to complete the Nelson Bay Road upgrade with help from the federal government. Port Stephens has waited nine years for the road to be half-built.
The two levels of government are working on major road projects such as the M1 Motorway extension, Hexham straight widening, inner-city bypass and Singleton bypass, but other Lower Hunter roads are groaning under the strain of faster-than-expected population growth.
Hunter houses one in 10 NSW residents
Mr Minns' first trip to Newcastle since the election in March last year will make him the first incumbent premier to visit since Gladys Berejiklian did so more than 1300 days ago.
He was in Newcastle several times before the election, including on February 27, 2023, when he said Hunter companies would be "extremely competitive" in vying for work to build the state's new train fleet.
The government said three weeks ago that the state would budget $447 million to keep the existing Newcastle-made Tangara fleet in operation for another 12 years while the government "forges ahead" with its Future Fleet Program to build the replacements in NSW.
"It's going to take time, but we're determined to do it," Mr Minns said on June 5.
Another state program with a long timeline is the 30-year Hunter Park and Broadmeadow strategy.
Mr Mookhey told the Herald two weeks ago that the Hunter was important to the state, had been dudded by the former Coalition government and deserved more investment.
It is up to Mr Minns, Mr Mookhey and Labor to demonstrate over the next three years that these are more than platitudes.
One in 10 NSW residents lives in the Hunter.
Andrew McNaughton, a British high-speed rail expert who wrote a long-buried report for the former government, told the Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday that Newcastle's population could "easily be a million or two" if the federal government built a bullet train to Sydney.
Is this Labor's ambition for Newcastle and the Hunter?
If not, what is it?
Are we to be a release valve for Sydney's overflowing suburbs?
An energy, defence, manufacturing and medical smart-tech hub?
A tourism destination?
A thriving container port?
A nice, quiet place to live up the coast?
The Hunter's university, business chamber, councils, charities, unions and lobby groups have been busy making their own plans for the future, but they cannot do so alone.
It is time the state and federal governments articulated a clear-eyed vision for the Hunter and backed it with intelligent investment.
