The Minns government will invest $12 billion over 15 years to build the state’s next generation of Tangara trains at a new manufacturing facility in the Hunter.
Two potential sites – a former coal mine in Teralba owned by Glencore, and the Broadmeadow Locomotive Depot where the original Tangara fleet was built – have been identified for the facility. Due diligence will determine which one the government proceeds with.
The significant investment comes with next year’s state election just eight months away, and the Minns government facing a resurgent One Nation in once-safe Hunter seats like Cessnock. The minor party is polling 22 per cent in NSW, according to the latest Resolve poll in May.
While unable to give a specific breakdown of the $12 billion in funding, which will commence in three years, the NSW government said the funds would go towards building the new Tangara fleet, the manufacturing facility, associated maintenance, facility upgrades, and infrastructure works.
Operated by a private manufacturer, the government said the manufacturing hub is expected to anchor more than 30 years of train manufacturing in the Hunter, while delivering 550 ongoing facility and supply chain jobs, along with 780 employing workers during the construction phase.
Premier Chris Minns will officially announce the multibillion-dollar outlay in a speech to Labor faithful at the party’s state conference on Saturday. The address will juxtapose the decision to manufacture at least 50 per cent of the trains here in NSW against the former Coalition government’s acquisition of stock from Asia and Europe.
“A former leader of the Liberal Party and premier of our state, Gladys Berejiklian, once said that NSW is no good at building trains, that’s why we have to buy them from overseas,” he will say, according to an advance copy of his address.
“Running up the white flag on Australian know-how and showing a stunning lack of ambition about what’s possible in our economy. Let me say clearly, nothing could be further from the truth.”
The announcement comes nearly four years after Minns used an address at the 2022 Labor state conference to commit to replacing the decades-old Tangara fleet with trains built in NSW and create at least 1000 long-term jobs.
Two years ago, the Minns government announced $450 million would be spent extending the life of the Tangara fleet until 2036. Constructed in 1987, the 55 Tangara trains – which form 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 fleets will be replaced in the 2040s, and the Waratah fleet in the 2050s.
The state government announced in May that the new Spanish-built regional fleet of long-distance passenger trains ordered by the former Coalition government would not enter service until 2028. They were initially meant to enter service in early 2023.
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Max Maddison is a state political reporter at The Sydney Morning Herald.
