Knock, knock: is anyone home at transition authorities?

Each year the Australian Taxation Office releases data showing median and average levels of taxable income for every postcode in Australia. The latest release is for the tax year 2023-24. Too much idle time over the weekend allowed me to ask two basic questions. The first, what suburbs in the Hunter have the highest and lowest levels of income?

The answers are simple and unsurprising. Postcode 2291, Merewether and The Junction, has the region's highest income, both median and average. Interestingly, the median taxable income for postcode 2291 in 2024-24 is $71,892, only a little above second-placed postcode 2293 (Wickham and Maryville) with $69,032. But for average taxable income, postcode 2291 soars to $113,364, meaning Merewether and The Junction are homes to an elite of very high-income earners who drive the average skyward. But you know this about Merewether and The Junction, right?

Likewise, the ranks of most other postcodes in the Hunter - there are 54 in total - for median incomes in 2023-24 are also predictable. Newcastle's post-war working class suburbs, in a corridor westward from Jesmond and Wallsend, cluster in the bottom half of the list, just above postcodes in the old coalfields townships. Also down the list is the two belts of ageing waterside suburbs, those on the western side of Lake Macquarie and those lining Nelson Bay. It remains true that you don't need an above average income in the Hunter to live in a nice neighbourhood, which is good.

The surprises in my investigation come from my second question, what towns and suburbs are the winners and losers income-wise over the past 20 years? Two sizeable changes in the region's income rankings became clear. The first is that the old working class neighbourhoods in inner Newcastle have gentrified massively with median incomes skyrocketing up the leaderboard. As noted above, the postcode area for Wickham and Maryville now ranks second in the Hunter, up an astonishing 24 positions from its 2003-4 rank. Similarly, postcode 2294, for Carrington, sits at eighth on the region's median income table, up 29 places since 2003-4.

Of course, the gentrification of inner Newcastle is driven by young professionals moving into these neighbourhoods. At the last census, for the statistical area covering Wickham, Carrington and Tighes Hill, 37 per cent of those aged 15 years and over held university degrees, compared with 26 per cent for Australia as a whole. It's a winning combination: highly-educated young folk, groovy affordable neighbourhoods, quality professional services employers.

The other sizeable change is the evacuation of good incomes from households in the region's open-cut coal mining districts. In 2003-4, postcode 2330, for Singleton, was on the podium, taking third position for median income for the region. For 2023-24, though, Singleton's rank dived to 22. Muswellbrook has undergone a similar tumble, ranking fifth in 2003-4 but a mere 18 in 2023-24.

If Singleton had held its 2003-4 rank, postcode 2330 would be better off in 2023-24 by a total of $91 million. If Muswellbrook had held its rank, aggregate income across its postcode in 2023-24 would have been higher by $31 million. That's a lot of money - over $120 million annually - now absent from the heartland of coal.

Two reasons for the fall in rankings for Singleton and Muswellbrook are likely. One is the loss of power station jobs for local workers due to the closure of Liddell power station in April 2023, just before the 2023-24 tax year on which this analysis is based. The second is the rise of drive-in, drive-out workers. The local economies of Singleton and Muswellbrook struggle as a growing number of non-resident workers haul their coal pay cheques down the M15 motorway,

Increasingly, Muswellbrook and Singleton are looking like mining towns all over the world. They're promised eternal prosperity, then their income steams dry up, then they're left with the cleanup. Is anyone listening to Muswellbrook mayor Jeff Drayton?

Where are those transition authorities? On your bikes fellas.

Phillip O'Neill is professor of economic geography at Western Sydney University.