Go West and Project Sydney have helped end the misrepresentation of Western Sydney
ELECTIONS, heatwaves and shootings are headlines that have contributed to Western Sydney being misrepresented. The Daily Telegraph’s Go West and Project Sydney campaigns have done much to change this and for good reason.
Opinion
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ELECTIONS, heatwaves and shootings. When Western Sydney makes headlines, chances are these topics lead.
It’s understandable when you’re home to so many marginal electorates. When temperatures in Penrith soar well above coastal averages, no wonder the weather prevails in print. And when you’re perceived to be in the grip of gang warfare, there’s little room for coverage of the realities of Western Sydney.
We’re too busy dodging bullets, sunlight and politicians out here for straight talk. Right?
The Daily Telegraph’s Go West and Project Sydney campaigns have done much to end this misrepresentation. It’s important. Not simply because the blinkered portrayal sells the region short. It undermines Australia’s prospects.
Western Sydney is not in deficit. It doesn’t need saving. It needs to be acknowledged for what it is, in the national interest: the country’s fastest growing region; our third largest economy; the focus of our largest infrastructure investments; our small and medium enterprise heartland; and the source of our deepest trade and cultural links.
By reason of scale alone, the west is where Australia’s fortune will be won or lost. But you wouldn’t know it from the prevailing narrative.
We need a new direction for the west.
Picking up on the Telegraph’s lead and with its direct involvement, yesterday Western Sydney University held the CatalystWest forum at its Parramatta Square campus.
If you thought Sydney’s train dilemmas were beyond saving, think again.
At this sold-out event more than 300 leaders from government, industry and the community converged on the university’s Parramatta Square campus to agree on solutions to the region’s biggest challenges in health, transport, work and urban design.
If you thought Sydney’s train dilemmas were beyond saving, think again. This forum saw the region’s best transport minds push beyond current thinking on people movement. Driverless, drone and even “workanywhere” approaches to solving seemingly unsolvable transport woes will be rolled out.
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The urgency is clear. The beginnings of health “tsunamis” in heart disease, obesity, ageing and depression are already here.
Our national response to these issues will be most tested in Sydney’s west, where population growth and health system overload abound.
At CatalystWest we saw how digital health platforms can lessen the burden on already strained hospitals and improve prevention in the home and across communities.
Forum participants also worked on using rather than simply suffering urban heat build-up, using smart digitally infused design to draw energy from the west’s chart-topping heat.
Business and industry heavyweights like KPMG and GPT backed the event, alongside government agencies such as Landcom, and South Western Sydney Local Health District.
They and the event’s many supporters understand outmoded ideas of Western Sydney won’t cut it if we are to succeed as a region and nation over the coming decades.
Dr Andy Marks is assistant vice-chancellor at Western Sydney University.