Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Western Sydney is about creating jobs, particularly infrastructure jobs. Recently, I joined the Prime Minister and the Minister for Population, Cities and Urban Infrastructure to announce $11 billion in funding for Sydney Metro Greater West. This will deliver thousands of jobs and provide a long-term economic boost to Western Sydney, particularly in the electorate of Lindsay.

This addition is part of a $3.5 billion investment in our area. It will revitalise St Marys. It will bring a new town centre. It will also bring opportunities in small business to Orchard Hills, where a second railway station will be built. And, excitingly, Luddenham will become an innovation precinct, which will bring education and health jobs to my community of Lindsay. I'm really excited that our community will have an opportunity to work closer to home and that our local small businesses will be linked to global opportunities. I was one of the 300,000 people who commute from Western Sydney daily for a job. This project means that each of these people and our kids in the future will have more opportunities to work where they live and to spend more time with their families.

The construction of the rail link will provide 14,000 jobs, and the metro link will support 200,000 new jobs in the Western Parkland City. Importantly, these jobs will go to people who live in Western Sydney. Already we have over 50 per cent of a local workforce when it comes to construction of the Western Sydney International Airport. This is part of my plan for Lindsay: creating local jobs by backing small businesses, busting congestion on our roads and creating better transport options so that people can live, work and stay in our community. Early construction work will begin in December this year, so the rail link will be up and running as the airport opens and welcomes Western Sydney to the world.

The Western Sydney International (Nancy-Bird Walton) Airport is a $5.3 billion investment and one of the biggest infrastructure investments in a generation. It will bring jobs to the construction industry but also to science and technology, engineering and maths. This is what I'm really excited about for the future: ensuring our local kids are being educated in STEM so they can take all the opportunities that are coming with the development of Western Sydney airport. I look forward to seeing the construction of the north-south rail link begin so we can see the opportunities that arise from it.

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