by Mike Newman, the leader of ONe Nation New South Wales

If you wanted a finer example of why government programs are set up to fail, look no further than the Minns Labor Government’s plan to spend $12 billion of taxpayer funds building trains in the Hunter.

Desperate to shore up flailing electoral fortunes in long-time Labor strongholds neglected for decades, the government assembled a ministerial convoy in high-vis and baseball caps to announce a project that has not been properly budgeted. Friday’s Expression of Interest launch was not a procurement milestone so much as a campaign event. The media release listed seven Labor MPs: Premier Chris Minns, Transport Minister John Graham, Hunter Minister Yasmin Catley, Regional Transport Minister Jenny Aitchison, Domestic Manufacturing Minister Courtney Houssos, Cessnock MP Clayton Barr and Newcastle MP Tim Crakanthorp. That is how you buy headlines in the Hunter six months before an election. It is not how you buy trains.

The $12 billion figure was first dropped in July. It is still not a budget line item. The full business case has not gone to Cabinet. The 2026–27 Budget set aside $151.6 million over four years for planning. Transport Secretary Josh Murray told estimates that, depending on the scenario, perhaps $1.5 to $2.2 billion of the $12 billion might be spent in the forwards. Asked to split the factory from the fleet, Minister Graham refused, saying the government would not “signal that ahead of accepting offers from the private sector.” Then they named $12 billion in public anyway.

That is the opposite of commercial discipline.

When you start with a plan to spend $12 billion of other people’s money and then call for EOIs, you leave no wriggle room for manufacturers to compete on price. You have already told the market the size of the prize. Effective competition requires a specification, an internal budget envelope, and a willingness to walk away. Labor has published the jackpot, wrapped it in a 50 per cent local-content rule, promised a state-owned factory on a site that has not even been chosen, and invited the world to “show us what they can do.”

The nine-week EOI is not a market test. It is an invitation to price to the headline figure.
NSW has already run this experiment. The Auditor-General’s October 2025 report on rail rolling-stock procurement is the manual. The New Intercity Fleet — the Mariyung trains now crawling onto the Central Coast and Blue Mountains lines — was announced in 2014 as a $2.8 billion investment. At contract award in 2016 the capital estimate was $2.9 billion. By late 2024 it was about $4.5 billion, more than 55 per cent up. First trains were promised for 2019. Passengers boarded in December 2024. Five years late. Extra carriages cost 28 per cent more on the first top-up and 63 per cent on the next. Enabling works, a maintenance facility, power upgrades and industrial action were never in the original number.

The Regional Rail Fleet was worse in one respect: the 2017 announcement did not even name a price. The contract was signed in 2019 at about $1.5 billion. By January 2023 the estimate was $2.3 billion — more than 53 per cent up. First services slid from early 2023 toward late 2026. Combined, the Auditor-General put NIF and RRF at about $6.8 billion and found Transport did not effectively scope or cost either project. Lessons from Waratah, Millennium, OSCAR and Hunter procurements were cited internally and not applied.

Future Fleet repeats every design flaw and adds new ones. The factory is state-owned and privately operated, on either a former Glencore coal mine at Teralba or the Broadmeadow Locomotive Depot. Site selection is due by year’s end. Land remediation on a mine site is never a rounding error. A hard 50 per cent Australia–New Zealand content rule is a policy choice, not a free lunch. Horizon 1 is meant to replace about 445 Tangara cars. Even at the $5 billion first-fleet figure Minns claimed — which Transport Secretary Murray would not confirm — that is roughly $11 million a car, NIF-blowout territory, before later fleets in the 2040s and 2050s have even been priced. Passengers will not ride a Hunter-built replacement Tangara until the early 2030s. By then the ministers in Friday’s photograph will be in different jobs, or none. The liability will still be on the state’s books.

There is a more basic problem than the procurement theatre. Train building is not a PowerPoint industry. A rolling-stock plant needs firm, dispatchable power for steel fabrication, welding lines, paint booths, cranes and test sheds. Eraring, Australia’s largest coal-fired station at 2,880 MW, still holds the NSW grid together. Origin has already been forced to push closure to 30 April 2029 after AEMO warned the system was not ready. The same government that cannot give Tomago a commercial power price without a subsidy now wants manufacturers to bid on a plant that will draw industrial load through the 2030s — after Eraring is scheduled to go. You do not rebuild manufacturing on the energy policy that crushed it. A blackout wrecks a production line. Insurers and bidders will price that risk into the $12 billion pot. The taxpayer pays twice.

None of this means NSW should never build trains here. It means you do not start with the press conference. Finish the business case. Keep the reservation price inside the agency. Specify the trains, the factory and the content rule as constraints and let bidders compete. Publish the contract value after it is signed. Do not send seven MPs to stand in front of a site and call it delivery. Formal procurement is not even scheduled until March 2027. Between the high-vis and the first set of keys there is ample time for the number to move, as it always does.

That is why procurement needs a massive overhaul. One Nation will always strive to be a safe custodian of the taxpayer purse and would never replicate the rent-seeking style of contracting Labor has displayed with trains in the Hunter. The only jobs Labor MPs are desperate to save in the Hunter are their own.