28th May, 2025.
My question is to the Premier. In 1994, when Wet Wet Wet’s Love Is All Around Me was on top of the ARIA charts new Endeavour trains were introduced. Now 30 years later we are waiting on replacements, can the Premier let this house know how the replacements are going if “There's no beginning” and if “There'll be no end?” Cause Premier, in this Parliament my community does depend.
Mr Chris Minns (Kogarah—Premier): I feel that love is all around us. It is a serious question that relates to procurement from the New South Wales Government. I draw to the attention of the House to a decision made in 2016 by a fellow named Andrew Constance.
I know he was a candidate in the recent Federal election, but I am not sure how he went. Did he get up in the end?
He did not make it. I have been keeping count: I think that was his sixth attempt since leaving this Parliament—they call him "Offshore Andrew" down there. He decided that we could not build trains in New South Wales and that a public-private partnership [PPP] would be best with the construction taking place offshore. He was not alone. The National Party also was implicated in that decision. I have a quote from a John Barilaro—I do not know what happened to him either. He stated:
We don't build trains in New South Wales and often we will get criticised, but the reality is it's about delivery on time, efficiencies and costs.
He added that a PPP is a balanced approach in getting value for money for the taxpayer, getting the product that we need quicker, and understanding that in Australia, building trains is "not one of our strengths". That is a funny thing for a leader of the National Party to say. Maybe we should send him to New York as our representative. He sounds like a good advocate. Maybe he should be off to New York, helping us out over there. In any event, I need to reveal to the House that a leaked Infrastructure NSW report from 2022 indicated that the project had blown out by $826 million and was 35 months late—three years late. The decision in 2016 was that "New South Wales can't build trains. Don't worry about it. We will get it from Spain. It will turn up any day now." We are still waiting in 2025. I can reveal to the House that, of the 29 trains that were ordered, we currently only have four.
That is a salient warning to this and future parliaments that we can build trains in New South Wales and that domestic manufacturing counts. We would have far more leverage and control of the contract, and we would understand how far they were from the tracks. We have over 100 years of history of building trains. I think the decision is a repudiation of Offshore Andrew, and a repudiation of that failed candidate for the Consul-General's job in New York, John Barilaro. [Extension of time]
I point out that none of these were included in the financial costs in the campaign running up to the election. You would assume that, if members opposite had an overrun of $826 million, ran the risk of losing the next election and would hand over that horrible situation to the incoming Government, they would have given a heads up. "No, why would we do that?" The reason they did not want to do that was because they did not want to let the cat out of the bag. They did not want the public to understand that their years-long project of offshoring Australian manufacturing jobs was not only not delivering products on time, but it was also not on budget. We will get the trains on the tracks as soon as possible. It would have been a hell of a lot easier if they had been built right here in New South Wales.