News

Transforming the heart of western Sydney

ACU was delighted to host Hon Tanya Plibersek MP and Michelle Rowland MP on a tour of our new nursing facilities under development at our new Blacktown campus on 16 December 2020.

The Blacktown campus opens in 2021, and will provide students from western Sydney another alternative for high education close to home.

Vice-Chancellor and President Professor Greg Craven and Provost Professor Zlatko Skrbis played host to Federal Member for Greenway Michelle Rowland and Shadow Education Minister Tanya Plibersek.

Both politicians spoke about the importance of having a university campus in the heart of

Western Sydney and how the campus was helping transform the area.

Ms Rowland said that thousands of students would embrace a university on their doorstep, rather than having to travel across the city for study.

“It is a fantastic partnership that Blacktown has forged with ACU and here in this magnificent new facility, and also looking at the new facilities we’ve got being built in the Blacktown CBD, we can see that this project is really going to transform Blacktown and its surrounds.

“Starting next year when courses get underway, we will see people choosing to live and study in their local area”

“The great social contract in Australia is that you work hard, you study hard, you pay your taxes and the opportunity is there for you and your kids to have a better life than you have, or your parents had. That’s what an education is all about. As someone who was a commuting student from Blacktown to Sydney, I know how difficult it came be and how you can feel really discriminated against on the basis of your postcode.”

Ms Plibersek said, “Young people who grow up on the North Shore of Sydney are more than twice as likely to go to university as young people in Western Sydney. It’s not because people from Western Sydney aren’t as clever, it’s because they don’t have as many opportunities. Having this campus located here in Blacktown will increase that opportunity.”

She spoke of the need for better educational opportunities for students in the region and for rebuilding the Blacktown CBD, “making sure that a big tenant like the Australian Catholic University, with the jobs that it brings and the opportunities that it brings really improves the life of this Blacktown community”.

Find out more about our new campus and the courses on offer