Yes, it sucks.
You can use New Tab Start Page to work around it. You can't use the focus address field option in its settings and the address field won't be blank when the page loads though.
I don't remember if it works with local pages like file:///C:/Users/yourusername/Desktop/newtab.html though. Make sure local files are allowed for the extension at the URL opera://extensions. You'll have to try. You might even have to modify the extension to allow local the file protocol.
