Doubling down on Western Sydney
Where to from here?
Western Sydney is blessed with considerable strengths and competitive advantages and offers Australia the powerhouse it needs to drive decades of economic growth and household prosperity.
The COVID-19 pandemic exposed real weaknesses in the social fabric and economic structure of Western Sydney, with community confidence and business momentum hit hard during that period. We learned that success is not assured in Western Sydney and that complacency cannot be risked if the region’s promised economic future is to be realised.
Western Sydney is a significant economic contributor as Australia’s third largest economy, with an estimated gross regional product of $157b or 24.84% of NSW’s economic output. The region is home to more Australians than Adelaide, Canberra, Hobart, and Darwin combined1 – one in 10 Australians, in fact. A further million people are expected to make the region home in the coming decades.
The time is right to pause and appreciate all that has been achieved in the eight years since the release of Shaping Future Cities: Designing Western Sydney.
In this report we consider the risks that still lie ahead and identify what still needs to be done for the region’s economic success to be secured as we ask this question: if we double down on Western Sydney, where to from here?
1 Prime Minister Albanese Bradfield Oration, 6 December 2022.
