The Minnesota government will invest $12 billion over 15 years to build the next generation of Tangara trains at a new manufacturing facility in the Hunter.
Two possible sites – the former coal mine at Teralba owned by Glencore, and the Broadmeadow Locomotive Depot where the original Tangara locomotive was built – have been identified for the facility. Great attention will decide which one the government will continue with.
The huge investment comes with next year’s state election just eight months away, with the Minns government facing a resurgent One Nation in once-safe Hunter seats such as Cessnock. The minor party polls 22 per cent in NSW, according to The latest Fix poll the month of May.
Although it could not provide a specific breakdown of the $12 billion funding, which will begin over three years, the NSW government said the money would go towards building new Tangara vessels, a manufacturing facility, related maintenance, terminal upgrades, and infrastructure works.
Operated by a private manufacturer, the government said the manufacturing hub is expected to hold more than 30 years of train manufacturing in the Hunter, while providing 550 ongoing station and logistics jobs, as well as 780 staff employed during the construction phase.
Prime Minister Chris Minns will officially announce the multi-billion dollar spending in a speech to the Labor faithful at the party’s government conference on Saturday. The speech will include a decision to manufacture at least 50 per cent of the trains here in NSW against the former Commonwealth government’s acquisition of stock from Asia and Europe.
“The former leader of the Liberal Party and our state premier, Gladys Berejiklian, once said that NSW doesn’t have the capacity to build trains, that’s why we have to buy them from overseas,” he will say, according to an advance copy of his address.
“Raising the white flag over Australian talent and showing an incredible lack of ambition about what is possible in our economy. Let me be clear, nothing could be further from the truth.”
The announcement comes nearly four years after Minns he used the address at Labour’s 2022 government conference commit to replacing the decades-old Tangara fleet with NSW-built trains and creating at least 1000 long-term jobs.
Two years ago, the Minns government announced $450 million would be spent on extending the life of the Tangara fleet until 2036. Built in 1987, 55 Tangara trains – a quarter of Sydney Trains’ stock – were due to be retired in 2027.
Following the construction of the new Tangara fleet, the Millennium and OSCAR fleet will be replaced in the 2040s, and the Waratah fleet in the 2050s.
The state government announced in May that a new Spanish-built regional fleet of long-distance passenger trains commissioned by the former Union government will do not enter service until 2028. They were originally intended to begin service in early 2023.
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Max Maddison is a government reporter for The Sydney Morning Herald.
