Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For one weekend every September, the hamlet of St Albans, in the northernmost part of my electorate of Macquarie, becomes the hub of readers and writers, just as it has this year. The annual St Albans Writers' Festival, now in its third year, brings a world of writing to this village, which is in the heart the Macdonald Valley, originally home to the Dharug and Darkinung people and known to the locals as the forgotten valley—there's no mobile phone reception, and you take the ferry to get there. The last weekend that we had the writers' festival the program included Tom Keneally, Stan Grant, Caroline Baum, Fiona McFarlane and Hugh Mackay, as well as the director George Miller and food expert Simmone Logue. The festival has a commitment to emerging writers, and its program covers fiction, crime, history, art, social commentary, politics, food and travel writing. There's no easier place to rub shoulders with your favourite writer and chat over a coffee than the sponsored Saturday Paper marquee. It's an intimate festival, and battling crowds isn't a problem.

It's all possible thanks to the volunteer efforts of the residents of St Albans. In honour of their support, marquees in the gardens of the Settlers Arms Inn are named after the inn's wonderful owners and loyal festival sponsors, Gabrielle and Ian. The St Albans church also throws open its doors to host festival sessions. This is a true community event, and I was privileged to be at the opening night dinner not just as the local MP but also as a sponsor of the panel discussion 'The end of life' with writer Nikki Gemmell, GP Leah Kaminsky and Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi. Congratulations to Catherine, Jonathan, Myra and every single volunteer and sponsor who made the third St Albans Writers' Festival such a success.

Blue Mountains residents have been aghast at the Liberal New South Wales government's decision to build new intercity trains that don't fit the tracks in the Blue Mountains and aren't designed with long-distance cold-climate commuting in mind. My colleague the state member for the Blue Mountains, Trish Doyle, has been incredible in taking this fight to the New South Wales government, who've decided that New South Wales trains should not be built in New South Wales, or anywhere else in Australia for that matter, but should go offshore.

The tender documents called for a train that can be operated with or without a train guard, so we also know that this is a back door to taking guards off our trains. If you're a parent of a young person travelling to or from the Blue Mountains or an elderly passenger or someone with a disability, you really appreciate the crucial role guards play on our 1½- to two-hour journeys. Add to this that it will take years to adapt the platforms to fit the wide-body South Korean trains on the 60 kilometres between Springwood and Lithgow. Plus, there's no plan to deal with the 10 tunnels between Lithgow and Bell. All this is the result of taking the cheapest option, not the best option. Where was the cost-benefit analysis of the flow-on jobs, training, investment and skill that could have been developed in the New South Wales economy from doing this big project? It's also likely that the maintenance contract, which has already been agreed, will involve overseas workers travelling to Australia to carry out the maintenance.

This is the wrong approach for our economy. We need a coordinated approach to train carriage construction and maintenance to ensure that an industry that employs 20,000 people around the country and represents $1.75 billion per year is not lost. Demand for public transport is high, and nationwide there are plans to spend over $26 billion on rail public transport projects within a decade. Our local manufacturers and their employees, including AMWU members, need a chance to compete. Because each state does its own thing, we see the Labor government in Victoria creating more than a thousand highly skilled local jobs with the state's single largest order of trains to be built in Victoria but then see New South Wales sending all their potential jobs offshore. The lack of national consistency undermines Australian jobs and leaves them vulnerable to state government actions. Without action, the current fragmented approach is putting our local industry at risk. It doesn't necessarily cost a lot of money to fix this problem; it just takes a commitment to Australian jobs—local Australian jobs—as our priority.