Federal Infrastructure Minister Catherine King says the proposed high-speed rail line between Newcastle and Sydney will be "transformational" for the Hunter economy.
Ms King visited the Hunter on Wednesday to announce the start of work on widening the Hexham straight section of the Pacific Highway from four lanes to six.
She was in the United Kingdom last week talking to the teams behind the completed High Speed 1 line linking London with the Channel Tunnel and the 360km/h High Speed 2 project to join the capital with Birmingham and Manchester in the north.
"One of the big lessons for me from the UK, and particular from Birmingham, and I think it's going to be important for Newcastle, is just how transformational this is," she said.
"They were at pains to say this isn't about London; it's actually about the region that it's in. It's about the jobs it generates for construction in the region, but it's also about what it means for the economy.
"They had already seen in Birmingham, for example, major businesses move out of London, relocate to Birmingham, in particular, for their head offices, providing that opportunity for new industries, new jobs, really bringing people to really what is a very substantial city in the UK, and Newcastle is exactly that."
The government has appointed a High Speed Rail Authority board and on Wednesday started advertising for a chief executive officer to oversee the project.
Ms King said the board would visit Newcastle "in the coming weeks" to familiarise itself with the city and "look at what this could mean for the economy of Newcastle and how we make sure that the benefits of high-speed rail benefit the people of the Hunter".
She said in media interviews last week that she expected the Newcastle to Sydney line to be completed in 30 years.
"It will take time. It's a very large-scale project and we're right in the early stages," she said on Wednesday.
"But we're really determined to be the government that starts the process of bringing high-speed rail to Australia, but particularly between Sydney and Newcastle."
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Ms King said the English project teams had emphasised the importance of using existing rail corridors for new high-speed lines, though this would be a matter for the HSRA.
The topography between Newcastle and Sydney is mountainous and includes numerous waterways, which likely will add to the cost and complication of the high-speed line.
"Certainly one of the lessons that High Speed Rail 1 was at pains to point out to me is trying to use existing corridors," Ms King said.
"Not necessarily the same rail line, but building alongside existing corridors was one of the important lessons they've learned ... about being less disruptive to communities and less disruptive to planning processes."
She declined to speculate about how much the line would cost but said she had talked to the English teams about financing mechanisms for building it.
In March, the British government announced it would delay sections of the first stage of HS2 as the overall project costs blew out to more than $A190 billion.
