Premier Chris Minns backs Hunter with $12bn to replace ageing Tangara fleet
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 for the plant have been identified: a former Glencore-owned coal mine at Teralba and Broadmeadow Locomotive Depot, where the original Tangara fleet was built. Due diligence will determine which one the government will focus on.
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 such as Cessnock. The minor party gets 22 per cent of the vote in NSW. Latest Resolve survey In May.
While the NSW government could not give an exact breakdown of the $12 billion in funding, which will start over three years, it said the funds would go towards the construction of the new Tangara fleet, production facility, associated maintenance, facility improvements and infrastructure works.
Operated by a private manufacturer, the government said the manufacturing hub is expected to support more than 30 years of train production in the Hunter, deliver 550 ongoing plant and supply chain jobs and employ 780 workers during the construction phase.
Prime Minister Chris Minns will officially announce the multibillion-dollar spending in a speech to Labor loyalists at the party’s state conference on Saturday. The speech will incorporate the former Coalition government’s decision to have at least 50 per cent of trains produced here in NSW, as opposed to buying stock from Asia and Europe.
“Gladys Berejiklian, the former leader of the Liberal Party and our state’s premier, once said that NSW wasn’t good at making trains so we should buy them overseas,” he will say, according to an advance copy of his speech.
“Hanging a white flag over Australia’s know-how and showing a striking lack of ambition about what is possible in our economy. Frankly, nothing could be further from the truth.”
The announcement comes nearly four years after Minns addressed the 2022 Labor state conference committing to replace 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 that $450 million would be spent to extend the life of the Tangara fleet until 2036. The 55 Tangara trains, built in 1987 and accounting for a quarter of Sydney Trains stock, were scheduled to be decommissioned 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 a fleet of new Spanish-built regional long-distance passenger trains, ordered by the former Coalition government, would not enter service until 2028. These were originally planned to enter service in early 2023.
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Max Maddison is the state political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald.
