Statement by Mark Latham, NSW One Nation Leader

NSW Government planning documents reveal an impending population increase of 2 million people in Western Sydney, yet no commitment or funding allocation for a new public hospital.

In October the Planning Minister, Anthony Roberts, admitted that, “The State Government is laying the foundations for the development of a new city around (Badgerys Creek) Airport (the Aerotropolis) that when completed will be larger than Adelaide.”

Adelaide has a population of 1.3 million people. Combined with existing land and housing development in places like Oran Park, the total population increase in the Penrith-to-Camden corridor will be 2 million.

Amazingly, given the scale of urban development, the Berejiklian Government has not announced any plan for a new hospital to service this vast number of people.

The closest it has come is at page 48 of its Badgerys Creek Aerotropolis document, which talks of how: “NSW Health is investigating a site for an integrated health facility within the Aerotropolis in a metropolitan or strategic centre location supported by public transport. This could serve up to 250,000 people from around the Western Parkland City.”

Most likely, the ‘integrated health facility’ will be a series of primary care clinics. In any case, in meeting the needs of 250,000 people, it is still 1.75 million short in its servicing capacity for the surrounding population.

The Penrith/Camden corridor urgently needs State Government funding and site allocation for a new public hospital. Otherwise the strain on existing hospitals at Nepean, Liverpool, Campbelltown and Camden will be untenable.

Many people in the growth corridor will have lengthy travelling times to reach these other hospitals, which are already over-crowded and under-resourced.

The new hospital near Badgerys Creek must also have a large, high-quality peadiatric unit, in recognition of how this part of Western Sydney is becoming the youth capital of Australia.

One Nation recommends an early down payment on the hospital’s funding by abandoning the proposed Powerhouse Museum relocation to Parramatta, estimated to cost $1.1 billion.

It’s an insult to Western Sydney and our young families to think that museum facilities are more important to the region than a new hospital in and around Badgerys Creek specialising in paediatric care.

Both Labor and the Liberals are committed to spending huge amounts of public money on arts facilities in Parramatta when the overwhelming priority for the region should be hospital facilities to cope with the Penrith/Camden population explosion.

This is our age-long battle in Western Sydney: to provide essential services before the people move in.

I will fight as hard as possible to correct this latest planning atrocity in our region.

Pauline Hanson’s One Nation also has a policy of cutting Australia’s permanent immigration program by two-thirds, to take these population pressures off Western Sydney in the first place.