While roads crumble, potholes widen, and essential services are stretched to the brink, councils across the Hunter are throwing your money at an unelected bureaucracy that’s pushing radical climate ideology—and plotting the slow death of our mining industry.
It’s called the Hunter Joint Organisation (Hunter JO)—and it raked in over $565,000 from local councils in just one year. Cessnock alone handed over $51,000 of your hard-earned rates. That’s money that could’ve been spent fixing roads, upgrading parks, or keeping rates down. Instead, it’s being wasted on “net zero transition plans” and glossy brochures about a “post-mining” future.
Who runs this circus? The board is made up of Hunter mayors, yes—they were elected to represent their local area, but they were never elected by you to serve as a board pushing woke green ideology across the region. No public vote. No real scrutiny. Just a cosy club of local leaders bankrolling the very policies that will devastate towns like Muswellbrook, Singleton, and Cessnock.
The Hunter JO’s mission is clear: phase out coal, embrace net zero, and turn proud mining towns into experimental green tech zones. Never mind the 12,000 jobs that will vanish. Never mind the $20 billion in export revenue. Never mind the families who built their lives around this industry.
This is climate elitism dressed up as planning. It’s an attack on working-class communities, bankrolled by working-class ratepayers.
Let’s stop pretending this is in anyone’s interest but the green inner-city think tanks. Councils must withdraw immediately from this organisation and redirect every cent back into local services—fill the potholes, don’t fund propaganda.
Because once the pits shut down, there’s no “just transition.” There’s just economic collapse, rising unemployment, and communities left behind—again.
