Western Sydney is young, diverse and dynamic and the demand for places in universities, schools and VET is growing rapidly. The investments we make in Western Sydney today will affect productivity, prosperity and equity into the future.
This is the keynote given by Professor Attila Brungs at Business Western Sydney on Friday, 31 March 2026
It is a privilege to be in Western Sydney at such a crucial time for Australia. This is where the workforce of 2040 is being formed. Western Sydney is the youngest, most diverse, and most dynamic population in Australia. The median age is lower than the national average. The proportion of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse residents is higher than the Australian average. By a long way.
Diversity isn’t just colour and movement. It isn’t just a cultural enrichment. It’s an economic asset. And increasingly, an entrepreneurial asset. For example, according to the Lawpath New Business Index which tracks company registrations:
Research by Jock Collins at UTS showed that migrant communities are not only highly entrepreneurial, but that refugees—those facing the greatest barriers—establish far more more businesses than the average, and ones that were far more likely to succeed.
It is important to speak about the communities of Western Sydney, rather than assume a single experience. The region is beautifully complex, varied, and evolving. Taken together, it represents the centre of gravity for Australia’s future growth. If we can get the national policy settings right here, connecting education to opportunity, opportunity to productivity, and productivity to prosperity for all - the benefits will flow across the country.
From the perspective of higher education, this creates both an opportunity and a responsibility. Demand for university education in Western Sydney is accelerating. Population growth is strong. Aspiration is rising. And we as a nation need that aspiration. By 2050, demand is projected to reach approximately 264,000 places annually, an 84% increase. Western Sydney is already home to 56% of all higher education enrolments in Sydney, a share that could rise to 65% by 2050.
Employment growth is concentrated in higher-skilled sectors: healthcare, education, engineering, technology and advanced manufacturing. This creates a clear requirement: Western Sydney will need far more graduates than it currently produces.
As you all know, UNSW has been active in Western Sydney for more than four decades. We have campuses in Liverpool, Bankstown, Parramatta and Campbelltown and are establishing UNSW House in Powerhouse Parramatta as a centre for research, learning and community engagement.
However, given this need and the incredible national benefits that will flow from supporting it, UNSW has accelerated and increased its investment and engagement in Western Sydney for the long term. We see this as a shared effort with our partner universities in the region: Western Sydney University, University of Wollongong, UTS, University of Sydney and Notre Dame, University of New England and others.
We are moving beyond a single-campus-with-satellites mindset towards a place-based model — embedding teaching, research and industry collaboration where people live and work. It is our new core business. Every panellist from every university represented here today is telling the same story. We must expand our offering in this region.
A central part of this work is our Gateway program, now framed within our broader Widening Participation Target. I cannot praise Minister Clare’s determination to improve equity in higher education enough. His personal passion and drive to ensure accessibility is unique. However, we share the same laser-focused goal. Accessibility is not enough unless it leads to success. Only these two combined will serve Australia, these two, at the heart of Jason’s University Accord gives direction and purpose to Gateway.
Through Gateway, we have essentially reached our target of 25 per cent participation for students from low socio-economic, Indigenous and under-represented backgrounds - in just four short years. But more importantly these awesome students are passing. They are reaching graduation at rates comparable to the broader student population. These students are succeeding and excelling at a top 20 university in the world.
As previous panellists pointed out. It is critical that universities provide the right support to give these students a sense of belonging, and vital, but underrated, an experience that is fun.
The communities of Western Sydney deserve an education system that is not just equitable but is absolutely world class . Many of the universities growing across Western Sydney are also world leading institutions – few cities have such a collection of leading universities. Now is the time to leverage this world-beating advantage.
I make no apology, the bar of excellence at UNSW is very high, it must be to serve our students, but we reject the idea that excellence should be geographically distant or socially selective. Excellence and equity are inseparable. The contribution of our Gateway students to UNSW is improving our standards of excellence as we speak.
As a Vice Chancellor, I’m in the humbling position of having to work for and occasionally speak for a student body dominated by 18 to 22 year olds. It makes me conscious of the idea: We don’t inherit the earth from our ancestors. We borrow it from our children. We are its custodians.
And unfortunately, it’s not just the environment where we are taking from the next generation:
In Australia we have always assumed that each generation is going to be better off than their parents, and for the first time, this is objectively not true. And it’s happening on our watch. UNSW has calculated that weak productivity growth is costing $11,000 per person per year. That’s a national average. The actual cost falls disproportionately on young, working Australians.
If we don’t act the next generation will be worse off in:
And that throws down the gauntlet for universities and for the whole education sector.
University based research is delivering world-leading innovations in health. In Western Sydney hospitals, local health professionals trained across our universities, are working with transformative technologies and breakthroughs developed in western Sydney.
Health businesses, such as an AI-enabled translation developed locally by a UNSW alum (with others) are improving triage for multilingual patients and being applied to triple zero calls. A start up, Harrison.ai, is using artificial intelligence across radiology, IVF and complex diagnostics and will become a significant business in the region.
But again, the challenge that we set ourselves at UNSW, with our partners, is to ensure that the miracles - and I really do mean miracles of health - we see in UNSW facilities such as Liverpool, Campbelltown, Randwick and St George, are not confined to those buildings but available for all Australians, right across Sydney, right across the state.
Research-based innovation is world-leading and life changing. But if it is not available to every Australian, it is going to lead to inequity and two-tiered health.
The good news is this can work. For example, in co-operation with NSW Government for the first time in human history, we are ensuring every child with cancer in NSW gets a treatment plan that is personalised right down to the level of DNA.
Productivity is based on two essentials: workforce and multifactor. Workforce seems simple. We workers produce more in the same amount of time.
Multifactor appears to be more challenging. Technological breakthroughs, innovative methods, new industries and the environment in which they can thrive. However, multifactor productivity depends on having a workforce with the skills and capacity to take advantage of transformative technology. Productivity needs both innovation and education. The two foundations of universities.
Australia’s challenge is not just generating ideas but ensuring they are diffused across the economy. Improving productivity is hard but the harder and more critical challenge for Australia is ensuring that these productivity gains are broad-based, that all parts of society benefit from them. We must do this this if we are to reduce cost of living and improve living standards. If we get this wrong, narrow self-interested productivity enhancement will dramatically increase division between the haves and have nots in society.
Western Sydney presents an incredible opportunity to get this right in a skills-intensive economy.
As technological innovation and economic change reshape the nature of work, lifelong learning will become the standard. We need alignment between schools, VET and TAFE, universities and industry, so that learners can move seamlessly through the system over the course of their lives.
Shared effort is no longer a ‘nice to have’ it is a ‘must have’. TAFE and high-quality VET delivers applied skills, universities contribute research and foundational knowledge. Both need vocational pathways to industry. The essence of this summit is to drive us all to take the next level of concrete action – together.
The partnerships we have across Western Sydney, the burgeoning talent and aspiration, are the perfect opportunity to be a flagship for Australia in an equitable skills productivity acceleration.
On innovation. The Government has just released Ambitious Australia, a Strategic Examination of Research and Development in Australia - SERD. As the report makes clear. Australia invests below the OECD average into Research and Development. Business investment is particularly weak. Frankly, it leaves a lot to be desired. The tax and investment environment for R&D is significantly worse than the rest of the OECD.
The one area where Australia does better than the OECD is universities. We remain globally competitive in innovations like photovoltaic tech and quantum computing, because the university sector is shouldering the burden.
That is why the Government’s response to the SERD report is so critical and Minister Tim Ayres commitment to getting this right is so needed. His address to the National Press Club this week made that clear.
Western Sydney’s rich tapestry of talent, including those from across the world, is an absolute goldmine for driving the innovation that Australia needs.
One of our gaps is the translation of the world class research into tangible benefits. Through our engagement across Western Sydney, be it the Liverpool innovation precinct or our western founders program I believe that if we work together on innovation, Western Sydney offers so much promise.
As David Borger said in his introduction, it matters what happens next – in both education and innovation. We need to accelerate what we are doing. Build campuses, create study hubs, try new things, but always in a co-operative way. Success depends on context.
I’m an optimist but I’m also realistic. Despite the best efforts of Treasurer Jim Chalmers, and Ministers Jason Clare, Julien Hill, Tim Ayres or Andrew Charlton, it’s almost certainly an uphill battle to convince politicians and bureaucrats across Canberra that there are votes in people in white coats looking down microscopes. Particularly in the face of a global energy crisis.
However, people care about creating whole new industries and businesses, employing thousands of people in well paid jobs.
People care about genomic medicine and the additional years of healthy life that cancer patients are experiencing through treatments targeted rights down to the level of DNA.
People care about clean, green, affordable energy. Australia’s world leading research into alternatives to carbon-based fuels and efficient use of existing energy sources, is delivering economic benefits now and into the future.
And people really care about disaster forecasting and response and Australia is at the forefront of technologies that predict environmental disasters and develop effective responses.
This is what Australia needs.
As I finish, I come back to broad based productivity and prosperity. Education sits at the centre of this challenge.The education sector creates the knowledge, trains the workforce and drives innovation. But it’s not enough to invent the future. We must ensure the future works for everyone.
We are already in the middle of technological revolution driven by AI. Back to my optimism. I’m not worried that AI will replace humanity. I’m not overly worried that it will steal all our jobs. What I worry about is inequality. I worry that 31% of the students in Western Sydney don’t have adequate technology at home to support learning right now. Let alone what might happen with the coming AI revolution.
If we don’t proceed with care and intention, the benefits of this revolution will accrue to a small group while others are left behind.
The education sector believes in equity. We believe in delivering the benefits of productivity to the broadest possible sector of Australian society. I can’t make the same promise for Silicon Valley billionaires.
Right now in Canberra the Government is preparing what I believe is one of the most significant federal budgets this century. For twenty years productivity growth in Australia has been non-existent or anaemic. Every treasurer throughout the period has talked the talk on productivity, generational inequity and a reform agenda. We haven’t lacked ideas – we’ve fallen short on implementation.
The title of Jim Chalmers’ PhD thesis was Brawler Statesman. Obviously it was about Paul Keating, a Treasurer who introduced substantial and lasting productivity reforms. Keating was a leader, but he was not a lone voice. He built a national consensus around reforms that were painful for some, but delivered massive, broad-based productivity gains into the future.
If, and hopefully, when the Treasurer brings down a reform focused budget, we need the people in this room, here today to be part of a national conversation supporting reform. We all owe it to future generations to support changes that deliver prosperity for all.
I am always happy, more privileged to share a stage with Minister Jason Clare. The Minister’s hard work and vision have been central to advancing equity and excellence in higher education. Being a Western Sydney native, he understands region’s importance to the national economy.
As Member for Blaxland, he inherits Paul Keating’s electorate and his passion for broad-based prosperity. I have every confidence that he will part of a much-needed reform agenda that delivers the next generation the Australia it deserves.