Why Rosehill sale is a once in a lifetime opportunity for Sydney

Some opportunities come along only once in a lifetime. They have to be seized or forever lost. Now we face a decision that must be taken now or not at all.

Today’s Telegraph cartoon by Warren Brown showing Mark Latham ahead of the Rosehill inquiry today. Picture: Warren Brown

Some opportunities come along only once in a lifetime. They have to be seized or forever lost.

The chance to transform Rosehill Racecourse into thousands of homes in the heart of Western Sydney, with a metro station at their doorstep, is just such an opportunity.

This does not mean that it will be easy or that everybody will be happy. It simply means that it is a decision that must be taken now or not at all.

RELATED: Peter V’landys and Mark Latham trade barbs over Rosehill sale

There will never in our lifetimes be the chance to deliver such a massive tranche of vitally needed housing where it is needed the most in concert with a once in a century new rail network.

Watch below how Telegraph cartoonist transforms Mark Latham into a “horse’s arse” in today’s daily cartoon:

If this project is not delivered in line with the expanded Sydney Metro then the metro will simply go elsewhere to where the population demands are greater. It’s not just that the train will have left the station — the station will have left the train.

And so the argument that this is a decision that can be deferred or delayed or kicked down the road is dangerously absurd. Not only would it trash the value of the racecourse property and any future development but it would create a future nightmare for Sydney.

If housing and transport infrastructure are not developed in alignment then both are all but useless. Sydney has learnt this lesson the hard way too many times.

And so it is now or never for the Australian Turf Club, and just as the above reasons make a watertight case for a decision to be made now they also make clear what that decision should be.

There is no doubt this will be difficult for the racing community — which has no greater champion than this newspaper — but the brutal truth is that punters are voting with their feet, hence why the ATC has put forward this proposal in the first place.

And it is, as everybody knows, the ATC’s proposal, which makes the ad hominem attacks on Racing NSW CEO Peter V’landys as shamelessly political as they are dim-witted.

There is an opportunity here and now for a motherlode of desperately needed homes in an area that desperately needs them as well as for a new home of racing in a community that will welcome it with open arms.

We must seize the day.