Best of the West: Floods stir debate among city leaders

Minister for Western Sydney, Stuart Ayres, said the people of Western Sydney “deserve to have a flood mitigation dam”. He made the remarks the Best of the West conference on Friday.

Not a single drop of the 1000-gigalitres released from the Warragamba Dam over the past week would have been spilt if the dam wall was raised 14m, Minister for Western Sydney Stuart Ayres says.

In his latest push to help floodproof the west by raising the wall of the reservoir which supplies Sydney’s water, Mr Ayres said “the people of Western Sydney deserve to have a flood mitigation dam”.

His comments come after a week which saw thousands of people forced to evacuate from their homes around the Nepean and Hawkesbury rivers following devastating rains and flooding. One man died northwest of Sydney when he drove into a swollen river.

The mass of rain saw Warragamba spill about 1000 gigalitres — the equivalent of two Sydney Harbour’s worth of water from Sunday to late Tuesday night — into the already-pumping rivers it feeds. It’s the third time the dam has overflowed in the past decade.

Mr Ayres made the remarks at Friday’s Best of the West conference at Parramatta, the culmination of The Daily Telegraph’s week-long campaign highlighting the significant strides the region has made and what future it faces.

Minister for Western Sydney, Stuart Ayres, speaks at the Best of the West event. Picture: Toby Zerna

Addressing the audience, Mr Ayres added raising the wall would help reduce the peak of floods in the future, as well as providing more time for people to evacuate.

“We do hazard reduction burning to protect people from bushfires … the people of Western Sydney deserve to have a flood mitigation dam,” he said.

However, he conceded raising the dam wall “is not a silver bullet solution”, saying there needed to be more ­investment in “flood evacuation routes”, to prevent townships being cut off — as has happened to multiple communities living on the Hawkesbury over the past week.

Daily Telegraph editor Ben English had earlier said raising the dam wall “needs to go ahead soon as possible” and indicated NSW’s flagship masthead would back the proposal.

Best of the West event (from left): Barney Glover, Vice-Chancellor WSU, Michelle Rowland, Shadow Communications Minister, Stuart Ayres, Minister for Western Sydney, Daily Telegraph editor Ben English and Michael Cullen, Regional General Manager, TAFE. Picture: Toby Zerna

It was one of a number of topics addressed in a wide-ranging discussion about the future of Western Sydney at the event, held at Western Sydney University’s Parramatta campus.

The event also saw Professor Barney Glover, Western Sydney University’s Vice-Chancellor, call for clarity from the federal government on what future numbers of international students would look like and whether dwindling numbers would be pumped up post-coronavirus, asking whether the Commonwealth would allow inter­national student numbers to return to 2019 levels.

He said while Australia remained shut-off, other countries were developing “very attractive alternatives” when it came to tertiary education.

He added students were choosing COVID-ravaged countries like the US and UK “ahead of fortress Australia”, with clarity needed from the federal government on how best to bring international students back to the country amid strict border controls throughout the pandemic.

Speaking as a member of a panel including TAFE NSW’s Western Sydney regional general manager Michael Cullen and Labor MP for Greenway Michelle Rowland, Prof ­Glover highlighted the contribution of foreign students to the country and Western Sydney specifically.

“I think international students make an enormous contribution (to Australia) … they make a great contribution to Western Sydney,” he said.

“I think the NSW government is incredibly supportive of what is a very important part of the NSW economy … (I think) there’s a lot of geopolitics and other things at play with the Commonwealth.”

He was backed by Shadow Communications Minister and Greenway MP Mich­elle Rowland, who said a “conversation needs to be had” over future numbers of students.

“There does need to be clarity around this, not only because of the export value it provides … there needs to be a resolution about what is expected around levels of international students,” she said.