In just over a decade western Sydney has landed an international airport, massive east-west motorway connections, a genuine light rail network feeding Parramatta, and metro rail along the harbour from Parramatta to the Sydney CBD. When western Sydney gets a sniff of an infrastructure offer, it grabs it like a pack of rabid dogs.
Newcastle, by contrast, is a contrary soul. For good reason, sure, Newcastle is wary of politicians' promises. To the point of cynicism, though, Newcastle now sees discrimination by governments as normal, wearing infrastructure shortfall as its cloak of honour.
A fortnight ago, the High Speed Rail Authority (HSRA) brought its work to town, its CEO Tim Parker, its chair Jill Rossouw, and a stash of senior staff. Catherine King, the federal minister for infrastructure, transport and regional development, gave fulsome support in the press. Planning for the first stage of an east-coast HSR network is well advanced, they chorused, a Newcastle-Sydney HSR service will be the foundation building block, technical investigations are underway, they boasted, and a business case is imminent.
Yeah, nah, Novocastrians are saying already, and, to be fair, I have written off HSR promises in the past. This time round, however, I'm climbing on board.
The offer of a one-hour, one-stop, high-speed journey from the heart of Newcastle to the heart of Sydney is too good to refuse. It's hard to think of a more significant infrastructure project ever dangled before the Hunter, of a greater spend by government on economic advancement for the city and the region.
The timing of the HSR project for Newcastle and the Hunter is critical as the end of the region's coal economy rushes towards us. The NSW government says coal underpins 52,000 Hunter jobs - 15,000 in mines and power stations and a further 37,000 in supply chains and via multiplier effects. In 25 years, at most, these 52,000 jobs will be no more.
No single initiative can replace coal. But a HSR service can play a massive role. Access in an hour to the 500,000 highly paid jobs in Sydney's CBD is no small thing. Flexible work arrangements post-COVID invite new ways of dealing with Sydney. Well-educated professionals from Sydney can be lured by a more accessible housing market and lifestyle advantages. Sydney firms and government departments will follow. Newcastle's professional services firms will expand their reach.
And, in the event that an expansive east-coast HSR network is never built, that nothing is built bar a Newcastle-Gosford-Sydney service, we are still winners.
But should the entire network eventuate, the size of the winnings grows exponentially. An extension to Parramatta cuts massively the cost of a Sydney terminus. A completed east-coast HSR gives Newcastle access to Brisbane in three hours, and to Melbourne, via Canberra, in five hours.
Minister King says a completed Newcastle-Gosford-Sydney HSR service is deliverable by the mid-2030s. Name anything else on offer so substantial, as beneficial, in the transformation of the Lower Hunter economy?
In recent years, our region has put high-odds bets on various projects, all with unproven outcomes and shaky financial support: hydrogen hubs, a container terminal, solar panel manufacturing, a nuclear power station, lake systems on mining voids.
The Central Coast-Lower Hunter corridor is expected to grow by 22 per cent to reach 1.2 million people by the early 2040s. Right now, this growth looks likely to be accommodated by sprawling, car-dependent, edge-of-urban housing estates, dependent on low-wage, increasingly precarious, post-coal jobs.
HSR infrastructure offers an alternative, a public investment that enrols local skills and talent into a 21st century, prosperous, east-coast economy.
Newcastle needs to land this one. Western Sydney is a model of how to win a big project. Support from the business community, the media, and the general public needs to be loud and persistent. And, most of all, Labor's federal MPs need to bleed to ensure Minister King's promise is delivered.
Let's land this one, aye?
