Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Energy Affordability) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week, as a shadow minister for Western Sydney, I spoke at the National Growth Areas Alliance conference which gathered in my electorate of Lindsay. We had mayors and council representatives from many councils across New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. I proudly represent most of Penrith City Council, the LGA, in this place.

Penrith, like many local government areas in greater Western Sydney is the perfect example of a growth area which is in need of funding to ensure infrastructure keeps pace. From our multigenerational farms in the south of the electorate like Luddenham to landowners in the north across Londonderry, the manufacturing hubs of Emu Plains in the east and St Marys in the west. Many families living in the suburbs in between Caddens, Jamisontown, Glenmore Park and Cranbrook just to name a few.

My electorate is like many growth areas on the fringe of the city but not quite in the bush, with more people who have gone to TAFE and made a life from their trade or the small business than those who have attended university. We struggle with public transport, roads and infrastructure and the need to upgrade local community halls, which is why it so important to keep those local funding grants going. Housing approvals are constant, and our schools and hospitals are starting to feel immense pressure.

There is some positive that does come with this change, and we know there are many opportunities ahead. There will be Western Sydney International Airport and the surrounding aerotropolis. The aerotropolis will be home to an advanced manufacturing hub with jobs of the future for so many locals if everything goes to plan and we have all levels of government and industry working together.

In Lindsay, the Institute of Applied Technology for Construction at Kingswood has opened in partnership with TAFE New South Wales, CPB Contractors and Western Sydney University, which I attended. We have so many growth opportunities but, as I said, infrastructure is holding us back, which is why we find it quite extraordinary that the minister for infrastructure conducted a 90-day review which took a lot longer than that and then cut multiple projects across the electorate and across Western Sydney. It's not just about my patch in Lindsay. There are other communities impacted as well. South-western Sydney communities and those in the north-west of Sydney across Blacktown and the hills have seen big increases in their housing targets, and they need infrastructure to support this.

We also, of course, need better connectivity across the west, which is why even the New South Wales Labor government found it odd that the federal government had taken away their investment for the M7-M12 interchange, and they haven't put it back. The whole community doesn't understand why the Albanese Labor government is playing politics with infrastructure in Western Sydney, and we certainly deserve better.