NSW Premier pledges to buy trains locally

By Peter Robert

New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet has announced an end to the New South Wales Government’s tense policy of buying ‘cheap and cheap’ public transport rolling stock from the ‘foreigner.

Announcing a new order for locally made electric buses from Custom Denning, Perrottet acknowledged that NSW had long missed out on shore manufacturing opportunities in a bid to procure cheaper public transport fleets.

This led to a series of botched orders – trams with cracked bogies, trains too wide for tunnels and platforms, ferries that could not carry passengers on their upper decks when passing under bridges and cracking Manly ferries.

Typical of the issues you face when suppliers are located far away and want to push their own specs, fixing these flaws and delays during go-live raises the question of whether imports were actually cheaper overall.

This is especially true when the economic benefits of local manufacturing, including higher tax revenues, are taken into account.

Now, according to the media, Perrottet is calling for the return of local production to grow the economy.

“You have to focus on value for taxpayers. But I think what has been lost are the opportunities for us to manufacture locally and potentially at a higher price, yes, but a higher price means more jobs and better business opportunities,” Perrottet said.

“I know that if the private sector understands that the NSW government is committed to this approach, then they will take the risk and they will invest.”

He said promoting local manufacturing was a key priority for his government.

“…I think we haven’t found the right balance.”

Too right, he didn’t.

NSW once had the largest train manufacturing industry in the country, but what remains today is a shadow of its former self.

But that rump is now set to compete with bigger foreign suppliers that have been fed by us and others for years.

It’s a tough ask and yes, it will require NSW to bear higher upfront costs, just as Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia have done.

And it will take a lot of persuading for local businesses to believe that offshore sourcing as an automatic choice is really gone.

Perrottet needs to do more than “call on” local production, it needs to start working with industry and other states, to see how capacity and competitiveness can be developed.

And he has to place orders for more than a few buses locally.

After all, the industry will not forget that in 2020 the Prime Minister’s predecessor, Gladys Berejiklian, said Australia and New South Wales were “not good at building trains”.

Photo: transportnsw.info

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