WITH the 2023 state election just five months away, Labor state opposition leader Chris Minns has moved into election mode, quietly confident, it seems, that the government of Premier Dominic Perrottet will be voted out of office next March, ending 12 years of Coalition rule.
Mr Minns arrived in Newcastle yesterday afternoon for a short overnight stay that has him scheduled to return to Sydney today after a short program of engagements ends with a Business Hunter breakfast forum.
First stop yesterday afternoon was a guided tour of the UGL Goninan railway workshops at Broadmeadow, a favourite backdrop for politicians of all persuasions seeking to convince Hunter voters they are serious about manufacturing.
Labor is going big on a promise to return as much train, bus and tram manufacture as it can to this state, pledging to follow the Labor governments of Queensland and Victoria in reversing a long period of overseas built vehicles.
That UGL Broadmeadow has been building freight rail bogies for export to Asia and ramping up its locomotive manufacturing - more than doubling its workforce in the process - is a good sign for a resurgence of Hunter heavy industry.
Business peak bodies are by reputation conservative strongholds but Business Hunter and its predecessor organisations have long been comfortable with Labor in power, as evidenced by the appointment of former Hawke government minister David Simmons, who ran the Hunter chamber for a stretch from the late 1990s.
It was the second stop on the opposition leader's itinerary - Stockton beach - that holds the biggest challenge for the man who would be premier.
Speaking before meeting with representatives of the Stockton community late yesterday, Mr Minns acknowledged the long-term nature of the erosion problem, and the importance of a response that was more than the piece-meal replacement of sand after each event.
Labor's critics will say the ALP has had ample time in opposition to commit to something more detailed than the terms Mr Minns spoke in yesterday, but his analogy - of a new government arriving to take over "a half-finished jigsaw" - is a fair enough comment. In the meantime, he has pledged to listen and to learn.
It will - as Newcastle MP Tim Crakanthorp said at UGL - take the three levels of government to work together, but the state government is the undisputed ringmaster.
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