AS we are reporting today, Premier Gladys Berejiklian was quoted justifying the importing of finished rail carriages by saying that "Australia and NSW are not good at building trains".
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Apart from being an extraordinary thing for a state leader to say, it is also, as far as NSW goes at least, demonstrably wrong, as we will see shortly.
But in general terms, though, there are some clear reasons - all inter-related - as to why Australia might have a problem building things that were once part and parcel of a proud manufacturing history.
The theories of economic "rationalism" that have dominated Western politics since the 1980s saw massive amounts of manufacturing moved to cheaper countries - Taiwan, Korea and, especially China - with the idea that the advanced economies would concentrate on their "competitive advantages".
For Australia, that has effectively been our role as an iron ore and coal quarry for the nations doing the manufacturing that we once did.
In the United States, President Donald Trump was elected on a promise to reverse a similar "hollowing out" of manufacturing.
Now, COVID-19 has highlighted the shortcomings of the "globalist" approach, with the focus now very much on rebuilding "local" supply chains.
Against substantial price pressures, two companies in NSW - Downer Group at the former State Rail yards at Cardiff and UGL at the former Goninan yards at Broadmeadow - managed to keep rail manufacturing alive.
There is a good chance that Ms Berejiklian had the Cardiff-built Millennium Trains in mind when she effectively dumped on the Hunter's industrial abilities.
These trains, ordered when Bob Carr was premier, did indeed have a troubled introduction to the Sydney rail network in late 2002.
Software bugs were a problem, but other troubles lay with the railway's overhead power supply, rather than the train.
In November 2006 - the month Ms Berejiklian became shadow transport minister - the Cardiff-built cars were running so smoothly that RailCorp head Vince Graham described them as "the most reliable train on the network" and "twice as reliable as any other train operating".
And they are still in use today.
With this as background, it's fair to say that NSW - and the Hunter in particular - can very much build trains.
Not to mention ferries that can fit under bridges.
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