He's decided to bring his whole shadow cabinet down to Wollongong for two days of meetings.

This includes a community forum where the public can have their say.

It’s the latest in a string of visits from Mr Foley.

He’d turned up at the Dapto Dogs to pour scorn on the government’s greyhound racing ban.

He stood at Flagstaff Hill to show off his hand-picked candidate for the Wollongong by-election in Paul Scully.

He was here to criticise the government’s decision to have the intercity train fleet made in South Korea.

Last Friday he rocked up to reaffirm Labor's funding pledge for lifts at Unanderra train station.

And this is all in about a month and a half.

With the Wollongong by-election happening in November, we’d suggest we’ll be seeing a whole lot more of Mr Foley in the next few months.

It’s actually a good sign that Mr Foley hasn’t taken the same approach as many other Labor leaders in all but ignoring the Illawarra.

“The Illawarra,” his predecessors may have said, “why bother going there? We're safe as houses down there.”

So it is a pleasing sight to see a state leader in town so often.

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that, perhaps Wollongong really isn’t all that safe any more.

In the last two state election campaigns the outgoing member Noreen Hay had to fend off very vigorous challenges from independents.

One of those, Wollongong Lord Mayor Gordon Bradbery, is having a second tilt at the seat.

Last time around he was only a few hundred votes away from toppling Ms Hay. And that was before the substantial boost to his profile that came with being the Lord Mayor.

Cr Bradbery has said he's helped to transform the city of Wollongong in the last five years, and it’s pretty hard to argue with him on that point.

Given Mr Foley’s repeated trips down Mt Ousley Road, he might think Cr Bradbery is in with a real shot.

But even if Cr Bradbery doesn’t win and Mr Scully keeps the seat for Labor, we hope Mr Foley doesn’t suddenly fall out of love with the Illawarra again.