Mr CLAYTON BARR (Cessnock) (17:22): It gives me great pleasure to support the motion moved by the member for Swansea or, as I call her, the member for Cessnock by the Sea. I was born and bred in Cessnock. I was born at Cessnock Hospital and grew up in Cessnock. I went to Newcastle university but stayed at home with mum and travelled there and back each day. I married and built a house there and I am raising my kids there. Cessnock is the middle of the Hunter geographically. But we share a few things in common with the other parts of the Hunter. One of those is that we do not mind hard work. We will go to work and work hard. We just want to know that the workplace is going to be safe and secure, and that we will get a decent wage at the end of the day.
There has been a view in this State over the past 12 years that those hardworking people might be deserted by government and left to free market devices that ultimately fail regions. The new Minns Labor Government has a different approach. With this decision to invest $12 billion into the next 30 or 40 years of train manufacturing in the Hunter, the Government is saying to the community of the Hunter: “We know you work hard. We know you’re as honest as the day is long. We know you’ve got integrity and pride in everything that you do. You just want a little bit of a guide, a tip, a hand from your Government to help you on that way. You’re not asking for life to be easy. You expect to put your shoulder to the wheel. You expect to get your fingers and hands dirty at work and you expect to be forced to toil for every success you get.”
That is the people of the Hunter. That is who we are. We just need an ounce—just a little help and support from the Government. If it gives us a signal that it will back us, we will do the rest. Twelve billion dollars is a massive signal of confidence in the future from the Government. The Government can now fairly say, “We’re going to plant the seed. We’re going to pour a bit of water on it. But, Hunter, it is up to you to harvest the crop. And you can harvest it over and over again for the next 30, 40 or 50 years. We’re going to send contracts for future trains to you. You’re going to build the trains that are going to run on our tracks over the next almost 100 years since we will build those new trains into the 2050s and they will have a 40-year life span.”
Members should think about that. Come the year 2100, trains will be running on our New South Wales tracks that will have been built at this incredible new facility—made in New South Wales for New South Wales by New South Wales workers. It just does not get any better. It was an absolute privilege to be onsite today. The chosen site is at Teralba. The wonderful thing about Teralba is the accessibility. You have the M1 running at the back of the Teralba site—funded and built by Labor governments. You have the Hunter Expressway running up to the electorate of Upper Hunter, where people can get in and out from the west and the north-west—built by Labor governments. You now have this train manufacturing facility on the western side of the lake—built by the Labor Government.
The decision to find alternate uses for coalmining land, which has allowed this approval process to take place and this search to be undertaken was taken by the New South Wales Labor Government. It has made a commitment to buy local first and will also create a Future Jobs and Investment Authority, which will plan for and assist in attracting new industry, leading to a change in the economy of the Hunter. You would think all of that was good. But, if you were a member of the former Liberal Government, you thought the best way to do all of that was to take all of that support away and send it offshore so that New South Wales became the biggest employer in the countries of Korea, Japan, Indonesia and China. I congratulate that Government but I am not a fan of that. Incredibly, One Nation, which wants to compete in the Hunter, has the same philosophy and plan. I commend this incredibly important motion moved by the member for Cessnock by the Sea. She is a great local MP and a great Minister. This is great work by the New South Wales Labor Government.