About the Blaxland Electorate

The Federal Government’s visit to Western Sydney on Wednesday this week is seen as another attempt to enhance its regional support in the upcoming September elections later this year. Community Cabinet meetings were introduced in 2008 as an attempt to engage with the general public on important government business. The choice of Regents Park Christian School as the hosting venue indicates that Federal Labor is well aware of its need to connect to Western Sydney. Regents Park Christian School being the first independent Christian school to host a Community Cabinet meeting may also be a goodwill gesture that the government is trying to religious voters. The school’s primary building and refurbished science technology facilities which was opened in 2011 was funded by the Labor government’s Building the Education Revolution stimulus package.

Home Affairs Minister & Local MP Jason Clare

The Blaxland electorate where Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare is also the local MP contains unique demographics with a highly multicultural and young population with median age around 30 in the area. The seat of Blaxland has only had four members since its creation in 1949 most notably with former Prime Minister Paul Keating. The seat was redistributed with the neighbouring Labor seats at the last election slightly reducing Labor’s margin in Blaxland. However MP Jason Clare continues to hold a safe margin of 12.2% as of the 2010 elections. The electorate is named after John Blaxland, one of the explorers who was in the first European team to cross the Blue Mountains.

As of 2010 there are an estimated 95,000 – 110,000 residents living in the electorate. Blaxland has the highest proportion in Australia of Muslim voters about 17.4%. There are also a fair amount of Catholic and Protestant Christians living in the community as indicated by government statistics.  Blaxland is situated in the Auburn City Council local government area and in the State Labor seat of Auburn. As one of the lower socio-economic zones with unemployment rates around 10% in the area being one of Sydney’s highest. The Budget along with the government economic policies are almost certain to be hot topics of discussion. See a video clip explaining the 2013 Federal Budget on RPCommunityCabinet13's YouTube channel.

Regents Park is not a fairly well known suburb in Sydney, although there are no official statistics into this area, our reporters spoke to many people who did not know where it was. The Blaxland electorate which incorporates suburbs from Old Guildford, and Bankstown to Georges Halls and Carramar has often been associated with crime in the South Western Sydney area in particular with its incidents of recent drive by shootings and gang violence. However incidents of crime around Regents Park are not frequent and is considered a relatively safe area.

Social welfare, infrastructure and education are important issues in the electorate with its status as a lower socio-economic area. Infrastructure and investment in education are also important issues in the electorate. Blaxland has many educational institutions including a large number of public and independent primary and high schools. Some parts of the Blaxland electorate have also been earmarked to be involved in the rollout of the Federal Government’s National Broadband Network plan this year.

Regents Park Community Cabinet will commence with pre-arranged ministerial meetings at 4:30pm on Wednesday 22 May with doors opening for the Public Forum at 5:30pm. Refreshments will be provided by Regents Park Christian School. Attendance for this event requires prior online registration and the presentation of photo identification to the Community Cabinet staff. More details about the Regents Park Community Cabinet meeting can be found on the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet's website.