ALP promises cool schools as parties converge on Penrith battleground

A state Labor government would spend $300 million upgrading airconditioning for thousands of school classrooms and double funding for public libraries, the opposition announced at the official launch of its campaign for next year's election.

The government and opposition converged on the key western Sydney marginal seat of Penrith one year out from the March 23 election: Labor focused its pitch on education and libraries after the government committed more than $550 million to a local hospital upgrade.

Speaking before the party faithful and luminaries such as former premier Bob Carr at the Joan Sutherland Theatre in Penrith, Opposition Leader Luke Foley said voters trusted Labor to deliver on social infrastructure.

“This is always the Labor way. Essential public services ... the building blocks of a good life ... for everyone,” Mr Foley said after receiving a standing ovation.

Luke Foley at the Labor campaign launch on Sunday.Credit: Ben Rushton

Central to Labor’s pitch was a “cool schools” policy that would allocate $300 million to upgrading existing classrooms and ensure every new public school has airconditioning.

“Every parent knows what it’s like at half past three,” Mr Foley said. “The kids melt in the door.”

The Sydney Morning Herald understands the policy has been conservatively and independently costed at $500,000 per non-air conditioned school, meaning about 600 schools across the state would benefit and be upgraded in order of need during summer's peak.

Wherever “practicable” cooling systems would be powered by renewable energy and solar power, the Opposition Leader said.

But the government deemed Mr Foley full of "hot air" and said his policy announcement would affect a negligible number of schools.

“Under Labor, just 50 per cent of schools had air conditioning while today two thirds have air conditioning,” said Education Minister Rob Stokes.

The government says the more than $700-million it will spend on school maintenance projects over the next four years amounts to more than three times that spent by Labor in its final, four-year term in office.

Mr Foley also pledged to double per capita funding for local libraries, which he described as “the heartbeat of local learning” and said had suffered shrinking collections in recent years due to a funding freeze.

Mr Foley's speech was preceded by an address from the party’s candidate for Penrith, Karen McKeon, who described the suburb as the “centre of the universe”.

The seat of Penrith rests on a two-party preferred margin of about six per cent.

Former premier Bob Carr congratulates Luke Foley at the campaign launch.Credit: Ben Rushton

It will be at the centre of next year’s March campaign, Sunday’s announcements confirmed. Mr Foley said all 22 local schools would be air-conditioned under the policy.

Just one hour before Labor’s launch and two kilometres south, the NSW Premier, Gladys Berejiklian, announced the government would commit more than $550 million for the second stage of the planned Nepean Hospital upgrade.

The government said its investment in western Sydney health outstripped Labor’s when it was in office and had now reached $5.9 billion.

This month a Fairfax Reachtel poll found a significant plurality of about 45 per cent of voters thought hospital spending was the key election issue.

Long-held by Labor but claimed by the Coalition in a by-election shortly before it took power in 2010 Penrith is a key battleground in its bid to win a third term.

But Labor is making much of the fact the seat is held by Sports Minister Stuart Ayres, a key architect of a $2.5 billion plan to knock down and rebuild ANZ and Allianz stadiums.

While he made no health funding commitments on Sunday, Mr Foley referred to the stadium issue to claim the 2021 completion date of the clinical upgrade at Nepean Hospital would arrive sooner under Labor.

“When it comes to hospitals, we will do so much more than the Liberals ... because we won’t splurge $2.7 billion on new stadiums,” he said.

Labor is also campaigning on the widespread use of demountables, overcrowding and the maintenance backlog and  a looming classroom shortfall in public schools.

The party would empower the Greater Sydney Commission to assume vacant government land to build new schools.