Train Manufacturing in the Hunter is Back Baby!
In the single biggest announcement a NSW Government has ever made for the Hunter, train manufacturing is set for a new and long-term future. In simple terms, $12 Billion dollars will be spent to ensure that over the next 30 years, and probably more, the people of NSW will see trains manufactured for NSW right here in NSW.
How good is that?
When I was going through high school in the 1980’s, apprenticeships and jobs in the train building industry were highly valued. It was seen as a job for life. Well paid, secure and always going forward.
Gradually though, more and more of our new trains started being built overseas. First, it was the cabin shell. Next it was the engines and wheels. And then, in 2012, under the then Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian who said, “New South Wales are not good at building trains”, the entire train sets starting being ordered and built in Korea, Spain and China.
Train building in those other countries boomed as we sent billions and billions of NSW taxpayer dollars offshore to build our new train sets. Thousands of people were employed in foreign countries on the NSW dollar. Sadly, some of these new trains wouldn’t fit on the tracks and didn’t match our train station platforms and so more money had to be spent fixing the mistakes of the offshore order. Some of these overseas built trains also didn’t have train guard booths built into them for our safety.
I have a personal view that the more recent entire offshore build experiment was 100% about Union busting, but I will leave that for another day.
Over time, train building in the Hunter became a smaller version of its once larger self. This was a great loss in skills, careers, quality and sovereign security. In Australia our trades are the best, the ability of our tradies is without equal anywhere in the world and building trains onshore guarantees that the end product matches and fits our Australian standard. This was all temporarily lost to us on the back of short-sighted NSW Governments of all political persuasions over the past 20 years.
Getting our train building back up to scratch in NSW is no easy thing. In fact, the NSW Government on behalf of taxpayers, is going to build and own the new train facility. We will then work with companies who want to come into our facility to be the contracted train builder.
This is an exciting new chapter for manufacturing in the Hunter. I could not be prouder to be a part of Government that is taking this great step.