For a man who said he had a deep connection with this region, Tony Abbott had little to offer residents during a flying visit to Nowra on Thursday.
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After racing around the town attending private lunches and community forums, the Opposition Leader extinguished all hope of any extra money flowing to the Illawarra should he become prime minister.
"I want to caution people against thinking that the Coalition is going to treat the next election as an auction," he said.
"There is not the money, and because there's not the money, we aren't going to make promises that we just can't keep."
Mr Abbott said he was happy to spend time campaigning in the Shoalhaven, as he had a "deep connection" from regular family holidays at Berrara Beach.
But his commitment to the region - especially Wollongong - may have been reflected in the amount of time he was here.
On Tuesday evening, he was ushered away from media into City Beach Function Centre to spend a few hours at a Liberal Party fund-raiser before leaving for Nowra.
Mr Abbott began Thursday morning discussing the carbon tax, abortion and dinner menus at a food wholesale factory in South Nowra, before fronting a tightly controlled community forum.
He lunched with a packed room of party faithful - on chicken, not quail - at the Worrigee House Function Centre and then he headed to Sydney for some afternoon meetings.
At a brief media conference he indicated Labor's Gonski school funding reforms, compensation for the steel industry and future funding for the Maldon-Dombarton rail link could face the chop under the Coalition.
Mr Abbott said he would keep Labor's existing commitment - for $25 million engineering works - to the long-awaited freight rail line, but believed "urban rail projects" should be funded by the state government.
Similarly, he said compensation for the region's ailing steel and manufacturing industries would not be needed once his government repealed Labor's carbon tax.
Earlier in the day, about 200 Gilmore representatives were allowed through the doors of the Nowra School of Arts to hear Mr Abbott speak.
Liberal candidate Ann Sudmalis, who organised the event, said voters had been "randomly selected" and sent invitations.
The tightly controlled event ruffled the feathers of South Coast Labour Council secretary Arthur Rorris, who was not allowed in since he didn't have a printed invitation.
"Is this the democracy that we'll be seeing if Tony Abbott is elected after September - is he going to govern by invitation only?" Mr Rorris asked.
He said he had planned to ask Mr Abbott about his commitment to extra school funding.
NSW Teachers Federation regional organiser Dennis Long did manage to get inside to ask his question about whether the Coalition would guarantee not to turn back Labor's Gonski reforms.
Mr Abbott told Mr Long "funding was not always the answer" when it came to improving schools and said his focus would be on lifting "teacher quality" and parental involvement in their children's education.
Mr Long said he didn't think the Opposition Leader had answered his question.
"I didn't get an answer, I thought, to the most important part of my question, which was 'will you legislate later this year to undo the Gonski legislation?" Mr Long said.
Mr Abbott was otherwise warmly received by his audience, which was described by one questioner as looking like "a field of grey hair".
As he tackled questions from the floor - repeating his well-known promises to "stop the boats, get rid of the carbon tax and bring the budget back to black" - he received applause and plenty of cries of "hear, hear".
"I have a deep connection with the Shoalhaven but I think the Illawarra is a prospective political territory for the Coalition," he said.