NSW government caught lying about local electric bus orders
TP
In a thundering statement just four months ago, Chris Minns announced Sydney’s new buses would be built on the NSW South Coast. The first have just rolled out of a container ship from China.
These are Sydney’s new buses that Premier Chris Minns pledged would be built in NSW – but have rolled out of a Beijing factory instead.
Extraordinary photographs shared from the headquarters of Chinese company Foton have revealed the electric buses – some bedazzled with ribbons like new cars from a dealership – have been built in China and shipped to the NSW South Coast where they will simply have some internals like Opal card readers and seats fitted.
Just four months ago a thundering statement released by Mr Minns and senior ministers lauded plans to build 126 of the buses at a new Nowra facility, with the Premier saying then that “the off-shoring of public transport by the former government was a complete disaster”.
Yet pictures posted online by vehicle-construction giant Foton of the shiny new stock in Beijing have triggered fury from the workers’ union, which blasted the Minns government’s promises to revitalise domestic manufacturing as “lies”.
Mr
Minns defended the foreign-built stock, with his spokeswoman saying
local components were “only going to scale up from here”.
The images show a ‘delivery ceremony’ being held for 15 Sydney-bound buses at Foton’s Beijing headquarters, with the vehicles interiors’ appearing largely complete except for missing seats.
Another video shows the buses being driven onto a cargo ship before they were transported to Port Kembla, where they arrived this week.
The Facebook posts by Foton referencing the Sydney-bound buses appeared to be deleted shortly after enquiries from The Saturday Telegraph.
The images emerged
just four months after Mr Minns and senior ministers issued a statement
confirming a contract with Foton to deliver 126 electric buses “that
will be built in Nowra and service bus routes across Greater Sydney”.
“The offshoring of public transport by the former government was a complete disaster, which is why we’re building these buses here in NSW – creating local jobs and public transport that works,” Mr Minns said at the time.
The Australian Manufacturing Workers’ Union’s NSW secretary, Bradley Pidgeon, said the overseas construction “is against the very Labor platform” the Premier had campaigned on.
“We’re really sick of the lies that hide the truth – we’ve got quotes from the NSW government to deliver 126 buses built in Nowra – what we see is that Nowra must have drastically changed,” he said, referring to the foreign backdrop surrounding the buses in the pictures.
“From what we can see, there’s a handful of bolts to be installed to put seats in – this is not domestic manufacturing.”
The first set of near-complete buses goes beyond the “flat-pack” collection of components it was understood would be bolted together in Australia, with the NSW Opposition lashing the near-finished rolling stock as a broken promise.
“Right now, the only thing locally manufactured under this government is pathetic public transport reliability and a new set of excuses,” Opposition transport spokeswoman Natalie Ward said.
“The Premier promised these buses would be built in Nowra, yet they’ve been built in China.
“It really makes you wonder how you can trust anything he has to say.”
On January 30 this year, Mr Minns – alongside then-transport Minister Jo Haylen and domestic manufacturing Minister Courtney Houssos – said new buses would be constructed at a “state-of-the-art facility” in Nowra which would create 100 local jobs.
Yet that site remains undeveloped, with the buses to travel to a temporary site rented in Nowra, where work like installing seats, CCTV, and Opal card readers will take place.
A spokeswoman for the Premier said “we’re working to do better on local content”.
“The first 25 buses are heading to Nowra where locals will build in seats, CCTV, fire safety, wiring and installation of Opal readers and telematics,” she said.
“We want to see more locals building our transport fleets and it’s only going to scale up from here.”
Transport Minister John Graham defended the foreign-built buses, saying the first 15 – which are expected to be joined by another 10 next month – were rapidly built overseas to meet a shortfall in Sydney.
“This government is breaking from the last decade in which the Liberals bought new trains off the shelf overseas that created more headaches than jobs in trying to get them operating safely,” he said.
He said the amount of local content and work on buses would be scaled up to 50 per cent by 2027.
Matthew Geier
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TP
The NSW Anti-Slavery Commissioner has issued a stark warning over the purchase of buses almost completely built in China.
Foton delivered the first batch of 126 electric buses to the New South Wales government in Australia. Picture: FacebookThe NSW Anti-Slavery commissioner’s office has conceded the NSW Government will sometimes be unable to avoid procuring parts for buses and other projects which may have foreign slave labour links, in another hurdle for the new fleets on the way for Sydney.
The stark warning in the commissioner’s first report on the modern slavery risks of buying NSW’s new buses from overseas comes as the government defends itself following revelations the first of 15 new buses were almost completely built in China, despite Premier Chris Minns pledging they’d be constructed in the state.
The report from the anti-slavery commissioner, tabled last week in parliament, highlighted that foreign components bound for NSW risked involving modern slavery which could potentially be impossible to avoid.
“It is important to acknowledge that NSW Government entities will sometimes have little option but to procure products or services that have a high risk of modern slavery,” the report states.
Opposition industrial relations spokesman Damien Tudehope accused the government of not acting fast enough to implement stronger checks-and-balances to curb any chance of modern slavery, including introducing a suite of stronger measures in June.
“We take the combating of modern slavery very seriously and have been actively engaged with the Anti-Slavery Commissioner to implement best practice procurement,” Minister for Domestic Manufacturing and Government Procurement Courtney Houssos responded.
“It is already mandatory that all government suppliers must take reasonable steps to ensure their supply chains are free from modern slavery.”
It follows The Saturday Telegraph revealing the first 15 of 126 new electric buses were almost completely built in China, despite Premier Chris Minns earlier this year saying they would be built at a new specialist facility in Nowra.
The images were posted on Chinese vehicle manufacturing company Foton’s Facebook page, but were deleted within hours of enquiries from The Saturday Telegraph, with a spokesman for Transport Minister John Graham saying his office did not instruct the post be removed.
Mr Graham on Saturday said the government always planned to have the “shells” of its new electric bus fleet built in China, despite the premier promising they would be made on home soil.
“It’s consistent with what the plan always was, which is the shells are coming in from overseas and the internal fittings, the seats, the CCTV, the fire safety, the wiring, the telematics, things like the open hardware (will be done in NSW),” he said.
“Skilled workers will be fitting out those buses as a start and each time we’ll be increasing the amount of manufacturing (in NSW).
“That’s the way to build back from where we were…I want to be really clear, if the premier hadn’t staked out the government’s position here, nothing would change. We’d continue to go backwards. It would continue to be champagne and party poppers as we bought these things from overseas.”