Get rid of the roadblocks, premier, and build, build, build out west

The pleas of the Vijay family and others are a warning that should strike right to the heart of the Minns government: Failure to invest in Sydney’s west risks leaving young families behind.

The story of the Vijay family from Box Hill reveals everything that is wrong with how successive governments have treated booming parts of Western Sydney.

Tens of thousands have moved to the north western suburb on the promise of local schools, town centres and parks. They now live in the town that the government forgot.

As my colleague John Rolfe has revealed, the former government planned for up to four schools to service the area in 2018.

Six years on, residents are still waiting. Land for a new school in Gables – a short drive away – was only purchased in October 2022.

“We are the silent sufferers – the ones who believed in progress, only to find ourselves stranded in limbo,” Aravind Vijay wrote in Wednesday’s Telegraph.

Box Hill residents Rekha, Aravind and Advait Vijay and Manori, Anjana, Liyana and Methmi Premaratne, pictured where the local school is proposed in Box Hill. Picture: Damian Shaw

“Our children deserve schools within reach, our roads should flow freely, and our shopping centres must flourish. The broken promises must transform into tangible progress.”

The heartfelt pleas of Vijay and others are a warning that should strike right to the heart of the Minns government: failure to invest in Sydney’s west risks leaving countless young families behind.

Prue Car speaks at the Future Western Sydney event. Picture: Richard Dobson

This is not Premier Chris Minns fault, but it is his problem: he must act now to avoid young families in growing suburbs being left with nowhere to send their kids to school.

An audit of student enrolment growth, released by the Minns government this year, found that the 10 areas experiencing the highest student growth were all in the Western Suburbs.

“These areas saw student populations grow by more than 240 per cent in just five years,” Deputy Premier and Education Minister Prue Car told the Future Western Sydney event.

As she said, this left the previous government’s forecasts “for dead”.

She conceded that families like the Vijays deserve better.

Car’s keynote address on Thursday was the first time a state Labor minister has had the chance to speak at the Telegraph’s Future Western Sydney campaign in the event’s 10 year history. Until last year, Labor had languished in Opposition for more than a decade.

To give credit where it is due, Car’s speech had a lot more for Western Sydney than when Minns addressed Future Western Sydney last year, before the election.

She promised to cut planning red tape to fast-track new preschools, mainly in Sydney’s west. She conceded that Labor’s plan to build 100 new preschools in just three years is “ambitious” – an understatement for the ages.

In contrast, Minns last year used a pre-election address to announce that he would cancel – rather than build – more infrastructure for the west.

Construction of the Western Sydney Airport has passed the half-way point but the whole precinct has been dubbed the AeroFLOPolis. Photo: Supplied

He declared that he would scrap plans to build a massive tunnel under the Blue Mountains, arguing that the project was a massive money pit, and the cash that had been put aside by the then-Coalition government would not touch the sides.

That was true. The $1 billion or so committed for planning works would not have gone near the final figure, which Labor estimated to be as much as $11 billion.

Before the election Minns also scrapped a business case to scope a new Metro from Parramatta to the Western Sydney Airport, kicking the vital rail link down the road until the state’s budget is in better shape.

Cancelling projects in Sydney’s west because of cost pressures is exactly what has left the Vijay family stuck in “a wasteland of broken hopes”.

Failing to plan new roads, rail, schools, and other essential infrastructure risks Minns doing exactly what he criticised the Coalition for: failing to future-proof the suburbs set to take the brunt of population growth.

This has been a failure of successive governments in NSW. Before the Coalition failed to build schools in Box Hill, families in the northwest waited and waited for a Metro Line that kept getting delayed under the then-Labor government.

The same thing is happening in real time at the Aerotropolis, the 11,200 hectare precinct around the Western Sydney Airport.

Following months of criticism over the Western Parkland City Authority’s role in what has been dubbed the “AeroFLOPolis,” WPCA boss Jennifer Westacott broke her silence this week to blast successive governments who, she says, have failed to take charge.

“Someone’s got to take responsibility for delivering the infrastructure and co-ordinating infrastructure around the airport,” she told me.

Her attack was not only directed at state leaders. Westacott called for the Albanese government to step up, after cutting funding to vital road projects around NSW, including the M7-M12 interchange.

“The other thing that needs to happen is the Commonwealth needs to get back in the game. It’s their airport, and they’re spending a lot of money on it,” she said.

Before the election and since, Minns has reiterated his central message that his government is working to fix the Liberals’ decade of neglect for Sydney’s West.

Minns, and his ministers, need to act now to avoid history repeating.