The Road to Glasgow was a Road to Damascus for Scott Morrison.
Despite bickering Barnaby and friends, on the eve of the Glasgow climate conference, Morrison saw the light, heard the voice, and embraced the need to hit net zero by 2050.
The Prime Minister's epiphany continued in the Hunter when he announced $1.5 million for a feasibility study into how the Port of Newcastle can be an exporter of clean hydrogen.
Great news. But cast your mind back to when Labor announced $1billion for the hydrogen industry at the last election and the government called it snake oil.
Also, how can the PM claim credit for the 20 per cent reduction in carbon emissions since 2005, without admitting it is the work of Labor policies, state governments, businesses, and families with rooftop solar, not the Coalition government.
While it's a relief they're catching up - with Labor, business, industry, resource companies, workers, unions, and the community - the investment in renewables is too little too late and, as we've come to expect, lacking in detail.
As Sam Mella from Beyond Zero Emissions wrote the day after the PM's visit, hydrogen will play an important role, but "the structural change the Hunter is facing requires a holistic solution".
And what is the Prime Minister's holistic solution?
But to create jobs, technologies need markets, and markets will be driven by government policies and legislation. You'd think legislation was a dirty word, the way Morrison shuns it . . .
How do we responsibly make the most of the remaining years of coalmining? How do we support communities reliant on coalmining? How do we ensure meaningful jobs for the future? What are those jobs and how do they come about?
These are the important details missing from the Prime Minister's plan.
He makes a fuss about supporting the Hunter's economy to pursue new opportunities alongside traditional strengths and says we will do this "together and through technology".
It's clear the technology is happening.
But to create jobs, technologies need markets, and markets will be driven by government policies and legislation.
You'd think legislation was a dirty word, the way Morrison shuns it, but it's actually what governments do.
And where is the "togetherness"? How's the community involved?
Morrison also made a fuss about his "targeted investments in crucial infrastructure to support and create more jobs", these being reannouncements of the upgrade of Newcastle Airport runway and planning on the M1 extension from Black Hill to Raymond Terrace.
Without my constant advocacy for these projects - and Labor's commitment to them - the Prime Minister would not have even bothered to come to the Hunter, let alone match the money.
So, now he is finally interested in the Hunter.
Not the community stranded by PFAS exposure from Williamtown RAAF base, or the sick who can't get in to see a doctor because of Medicare cuts to bulk-billing and GP recruitment incentives, or the really sick who rely on the After-Hours GP service that is closing.
Nor has he had anything to say about people who can't work but can't get the disability support pension, or those who've had their NDIS plans slashed, or pensioners who live under the threat of being forced onto a cashless welfare card because the government doesn't trust them to spend their money, or families who can't afford childcare.
These are the realities of living under a Coalition government.
So, while the Prime Minister described his Liberal candidate for Paterson as someone who understands the history and value of the industries that have supported the Hunter, the candidate herself described the people of Paterson as "ripe for the picking".
As I said in Parliament last sitting week - and as I have said many times in the past six years - I have never shied away from being on the side of coalminers.
I'm the daughter of a coalminer, the granddaughter of a coalminer, the aunt of a coalminer and a friend to many coalminers.
For years I've been talking to miners and industries that depend on mining to ensure they have a role in decisions about the future.
Labor's climate policies will have jobs as a key plank. Jobs for workers whose world is changing.
I understand my community's history and the value of our industries.
I have spoken up for them and they know I do not see them as "ripe for the picking".
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