Mr ANOULACK CHANTHIVONG (Macquarie Fields) (16:17): I contribute to debate on the Greater Cities Commission Bill 2022.

Cities of every size in every country are important. The core ingredient of a great city that produces prosperity and a high quality of life is actually its people.

We have to make sure that we build cities and environments that encourage a wide diversity of people to move in so that they can share their ideas and energies.

We do not want homogenous cities that do not create the innovation to make our country and our communities competitive for a very long time.

We have seen it in history, with one‑industry cities or where people confuse great cities with just a few buildings here and there. It is not that.

Great cities are born out of great people and diverse communities that allow people from all walks of life to engage and to move into particular areas. Of course, a lot of that comes down to affordable housing.

I again tell the story of my community's lived experience and of the many thousands who are moving into our area.

The investment in their quality of life has not kept up with the population growth. It is indeed a lived experience of frustration, delays, pork‑barrelling at our community's expense and no‑show infrastructure delivery.

This is not what a great city should look like in the south-west and north‑west areas of western Sydney.

The focus on "greater cities" in the bill's title should not solely focus on geographic areas measured by distance from the seasides of Bondi Beach or the suburbs surrounding the Anzac Bridge.

The growth in south‑west and western Sydney lays the foundation of the emergence of a great city.

However, this population growth must be matched with infrastructure investment and a quality of life as people arrive and move in. We should not ask them to wait for years on end wondering whether things will arrive at all.

The New South Wales Government has indicated that from 2021 to 2041 Blacktown will take an additional 200,505 people; Liverpool, which is just to the north of my electorate, an additional 190,105 people; Camden, to the west of my electorate, an additional 180,000 people; Parramatta, a little further north‑west, an additional 140,000 people; and Penrith, further west, an additional 140,000 people.

That does not even include the Campbelltown local government area [LGA], which I know well. It is a place I call home. It is experiencing significant population growth as major new suburban developments to the south near Appin and Menangle are developed over this period of time.

I know all too well the pressures my community experiences because I live it.

In essence, two‑thirds of the population growth in New South Wales will be in western Sydney LGAs.

But let us also examine the level of public investment in public infrastructure. The McKell Institute released its "Funding the Infrastructure of Tomorrow" report, highlighting the inequity between regional New South Wales, inner Sydney and suburban New South Wales when it comes to public infrastructure, investment and accessibility.

The evidence is all too clear on how this Liberal Government treats the people of my community in greater western Sydney.

Table 8 of the report shows that not one out of the nine eastern Sydney LGAs were categorised in the lowest tertile. In northern Sydney, eight out of nine LGAs were either in the middle or in the top tertile.

But —wait for this— none of the eight LGAs in western Sydney were in the middle or the top. They were all placed in the lowest tertile.

Not one LGA experiencing the greatest growth — Blacktown, Camden, Campbelltown, Liverpool, Wollondilly or even Fairfield, just to name a few — received an adequate public infrastructure investment that would put them in the top tertile. Not one.

The appendix reinforces this view. The public transport accessibility level scores for western Sydney barely reach double digits while inner‑city areas score as high as 52.

This inequality is a failure of the planning system and the commitment to invest in growing communities.

If we are going to make great cities, we have to make sure that people have a quality of life that allows them to live a good life so that they can make great contributions to the local community and the wider economy as well.

After all these years, I would hope that there is more than just a bill to rename a government agency or do a bureaucratic restructure. Sydney does not necessarily need a rebadged agency.

It needs a government that governs for all of us. I would think that, after 11 years in power, the solution to Sydney's housing and infrastructure needs is more than just a new name for the same planning agency.

More needs to be done to address the infrastructure deficits that growing communities such as those in my electorate and surrounding areas need.

More also needs to be done to restore the trust in the planning system, which is skewed to urban growth concentrated in a few particular areas.

Those of us on this side of the Chamber, including my good friend and colleague the member for Wollongong, understand the failures of the Government's planning policies. We see it every day. I live it every day as I visit people in my community.

We see it in schools that are not built, in bus services that do not exist, in overcrowded classrooms, in congested roads, in hospitals that are struggling with overworked staff, and in the eyes of frustrated residents who just want their fair share.

In the past, I have spoken at length about the Government's failed planning policies and how there seems to be one rule for central Sydney and one rule for those where I live.

I find it intriguing that ambitious housing targets set for suburbs in south‑west and western Sydney easily eclipse those for much more established suburbs like Mosman and Wollstonecraft, despite the fact that these suburbs have been a stone's throw from existing public infrastructure for over a hundred years.

As the past few years have demonstrated with COVID, residents in the south‑west copped quite a raw deal. Unfair, harsher restrictions — including curfews — are just one example.

They are not exactly a good way, I would say, to create great cities.

As those in the Chamber know too well, the workers of south-west and western Sydney kept our economy going during the most recent challenges of the ongoing pandemic.

And yet I and my community feel as though our needs are routinely ignored.

I have seen that in my electorate, where suburbs have borne the full brunt of overdevelopment that does not come with commensurate public investment to improve people's quality of life.

Since I was first elected in 2015 I have been campaigning on that issue, which resulted in my Stop the Squeeze survey.

A shocking but not surprising 98 per cent of respondents said they have had enough of overdevelopment in their suburbs, and 96 per cent of people think developers have too much power under this Government.

My Stop the Squeeze campaign made it clear that residents are fed up with the unfair planning agenda, which threatens to produce high‑rise overdevelopment, destroys open green spaces and fails to deliver the infrastructure the community needs.

The Government is obviously very good at setting housing targets and forcing high-density development on communities, but those opposite fail to deliver the infrastructure needed to service those growing communities.

It is not rocket science, and governments have been bleating and talking about infrastructure needs for decades now.

I know from my lived experience and that of my community that all we want is our fair share and to ensure that greater cities can be built.

But they need more than just development; they need the services and the quality of life that they and their families deserve.