ONE thing that might have helped persuade many Hunter voters to turn to the Coalition at the last state election was its pledge to spend $160 million over four years on a program to more fairly compensate resource regions.
But the potential beneficiaries of this enlightened promise have been disappointed at the failure of the proposed "Resources for Regions" program to appear in the state budget.
Now it seems the O'Farrell government has relegated the program to an appendice of the "Restart NSW" initiative. Restart NSW has no money yet and appears dependent on possible "windfall" funds that might or might not appear at some point in the future.
This comes hard on the heels of the Coalition's announcement that it would like to extract more coal royalties from the Hunter Region, and troubling speculation that tit-for-tat warfare between the state and federal governments might reduce infrastructure funding opportunities for the Hunter still further.
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Newcastle Herald
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