I am absolutely delighted to be here with the member for Parramatta, Andrew Charlton, at Knorr-Bremse, which is one of Australia's premier rail manufacturing facilities. [It] employs nearly 300 people here in the electorate of Parramatta, doing state of the art assembly, state of the art manufacturing and state of the art engineering work for rail passenger fleet, for freight rail and also selling right into the global supply chain, showing just what is achievable for the rail sector here in Australia.

I'm here to launch the National Rail Procurement Pipeline, which is one of the important deliverables for the National Rail Manufacturing Plan, funded by the Albanese Labor government, that is all about making sure that we build the capability across Australia to build the rail rolling stock of the future.

We've seen what happened right here in Sydney when the previous Liberal government offshored billions of dollars worth of rail contracts, lost jobs, thousands of jobs gone, apprenticeship opportunities offshored out of Australia and, of course, investment and employment opportunities for firms like this evaporated because the government wasn't focused on local manufacturing .

Really pleased that the national rail manufacturing strategy, sits right alongside the Future Made in Australia agenda.


ENDS