"WSBC has been working with Deloitte on Shaping Future Cities: Designing Western Sydney for some months now, and the following, focusing on Health & Education Precincts, is an example of the first findings following a Summit held in Parramatta on 20 August."

Healthcare and education precincts identified as critical growth catalyst.

 

Over 40 business and government leaders, including the NSW Planning Minister the Hon. Robert Stokes, met today at Deloitte’s Eclipse Tower offices in Parramatta to discuss a draft blueprint to create 200,000 great new jobs in Western Sydney by 2020.

The event is the latest step in a ten month journey, which has brought together for the first time over 300 business, community and government leaders to develop an economic blueprint to maximise the potential of the Western Sydney region.

Through its Shaping Future Cities: Designing Western Sydney initiative, Deloitte has sought to unite multiple business and government perspectives on how to transform and restructure the region and create more local jobs. 

Deloitte Western Sydney Managing Partner, Danny Rezek, said: “Western Sydney has huge growth potential, but this brings associated challenges, particularly around retaining jobs in the region.  Over the past year, we have reviewed the existing plans and research developed to improve Western Sydney, added analysis from Deloitte Access Economics and canvassed the opinions of leaders across the region to develop a shared economic vision for Western Sydney to reach its full potential.

“Today’s summit gives us the opportunity to road-test our hypotheses on how best to create 200,000 great new jobs by 2020.  It’s an ambitious target and the blueprint is intended to set the foundations to create greater clarity, certainty and promotion of our region’s strengths.”

The final blueprint for Shaping Future Cities: Designing Western Sydney is expected to include a series of specific recommendations for business and government to adopt.  These recommendations will be based around a strategic framework for jobs creation, and consider platforms for growth, how to create jobs and how to connect the people of Western Sydney to those jobs.  The final blueprint will be launched in November 2015.

Building off our strengths

One of the recommendations in the draft blueprint is for business and government to concentrate investment on those industries which give Western Sydney the best opportunity for jobs growth in the next five years and beyond – those industries where the region’s comparative advantages meet global opportunity and demand and which will act as economic drivers to galvanise jobs growth across the region as a whole at above average rates.

Key economic drivers for Western Sydney identified by Deloitte include:

·         Health and education

·         Advanced manufacturing

·         Food manufacturing (including agribusiness supply chains)

·         Professional services

·         International education

·         Tourism, hospitality and leisure

·         Cultural and creative industries

The blueprint will explore each of these in terms of barriers to growth, where to invest, future skills required, how business can participate and connecting relevant industry and government policy. Beyond the above industries, the blueprint will look at the role of important enabling industries such as construction, logistics, retail, and other services. These will drive jobs growth indirectly through their linkages to these key sectors.

HEPs key to future jobs growth

· The health and community sector is the number one employer in the Western Sydney region.  In addition, Western Sydney has five health and education precincts (HEPs), and together these precincts have seen a 20% increase in jobs growth between 2006 and 2011

· Western Sydney’s five HEPs currently provide 47,000 jobs in the region and this is forecast to increase by a further 20,000 in the next decade

· Combined, health and education represent 21% of all jobs in Western Sydney

· The HEPs are all undergoing enormous infrastructure expansions (totalling c. $5b), particularly around research (e.g. Ingham and Millennium Institute)

· The region has a high prevalence of lifestyle preventable diseases compared to rest of Australia, for example Western Sydney has a 13.2% prevalence of diabetes compared to 4.1% in Australia

· Deloitte is facilitating discussions between Western Sydney’s five health and education precincts (HEPs) to develop a joint HEP growth program, which is expected to consider how to maximise their collective impact and pioneer new models for collaboration in health R&D.

“Healthcare provides an ecosystem of jobs and opportunities for all types of worker, from construction workers, to hospital orderlies, to receptionists, to doctors and teachers,” said Deloitte partner and blueprint author, Theo Psychogios.  “Our health and education precincts, such as Westmead, Blacktown and Liverpool are also located in areas of high population growth, providing employers with a ready local base of workers and helping to retain jobs in Western Sydney.

“There’s a collective recognition that if we can identify more productive ways of working together, health and education precincts are one of our best magnets to create and build jobs for the future.”

The Shaping Future Cities initiative is being led by a steering committee to ensure a bi-partisan approach and recognition that Western Sydney’s growth is a key part of Sydney’s and NSW’s overall success.  The steering committee members are: Stuart Ayres MP (NSW Minister for Trade, Tourism and Major Events, Minister for Sport), Chris Brown (Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue), David Borger (Sydney Business Chamber), Greg Dyer (Parramatta City Council), Professor Barney Glover (University of Western Sydney), Dr Tim Williams (Committee for Sydney) and Danny Rezek, Theo Psychogios and Ben Artup from Deloitte.