A new airport, aerotropolis and development of two of the ‘three cities’ in the metropolitan strategy all aim to create jobs in Western Sydney. But right now the only certainty is a huge jobs deficit.
- Director, Centre for Western Sydney, Western Sydney University
Western Sydney’s growth-driven boom had ended before COVID-19 hit. Some neighbourhood unemployment rates were 2-3 times the metropolitan average, with female workforce participation as low as 43%.
Education fuelled extraordinary growth in Western Sydney’s professional services workforce, but their jobs aren’t local. More than 300,000 commute to work outside the region.
Now that the Coalition has won the federal election, how will it meet its campaign promises on taxes, the environment, education, health and infrastructure?
The focus on roads reflects the fact that this infrastructure program lags well behind the growth of our biggest cities, resulting in less-than-ideal transport patterns.
Early intervention via education and training will cost money straight up. But it makes no sense to watch young people drift through unemployment and disengagement and turn into unemployable adults.
The Conversation’s economic experts react to the 2017-18 budget measures in the areas of living costs, economic management and infrastructure planning and investment.
Long-term privatisation contracts, most of them closed to scrutiny, lock urban infrastructure into 20th-century formats unsuited for a climate-threatened planet.
The budget paints a picture of higher debt, little relief for growing cities crying out for infrastructure investment, and no detail of how City Deals might work to fix this.
Sydney, as a whole, is lurching toward an urban structure where its transportation problems are impossible to solve. The only alternative is to create new centres of employment.
The Abbott government has committed an additional A$11.6 billion for an “infrastructure growth package” that is heavy on roads, but aimed at fast-tracking what it considers critical infrastructure. The…
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