New South Wales Premier Mike Baird, almost exactly 100 days in office, addressed an Australian British Chamber of Commerce lunch in Sydney yesterday. He described the state’s trade and investment links with Britain as large and growing, something he is keen to continue. British companies are major investors in NSW; many of them were represented among the 300 or so guests at the lunch.
He also set out the returning confidence of the NSW economy, supported by an impressive array of metrics. He detailed the state government’s programme of recycling capital from ports privatisation into new investment in infrastructure, particularly in transport. There is significant British commercial interest in NSW’s road and rail programmes, and our UK Trade & Investment team are actively promoting it as a “High Value Opportunity”. The Premier had an opportunity to discuss this with our Trade Minister Lord Livingston when he visited Sydney earlier this month.
Mike knows the UK well, from his days as a banker in London, and I enjoyed chatting with him at the lunch.
