People

Long before it ever became the object of legislation, a university in Western Sydney was the object of community desire. In 1953, Gough Whitlam referred to the lack of educational opportunity (or indeed, many of the more basic services, such as roads and sewerage) in his south-western Sydney seat of Werriwa. Schools, hospitals and educational opportunity would be his familiar refrain right up until the eve of his election, in 1972, when he promised that "The next university in NSW,” he stated in Parramatta, “the next college of advanced education and the next teachers' college must be built in the western suburbs, an area which has the largest population of college age of any area in Australia."  In 1961, the Cumberland County Council noted the need for a university in western Sydney for 'future students', but preferred a greenfields site at North Ryde in order to deal with the immediate pressure of students from the northern suburbs which threatened to turn the University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney into 'vast unwieldy organisations'. The allocation of space for universities at Werrington and in Campbelltown would remain an accusing green finger for another three decades.

On his accession as prime minister in 1972, Gough Whitlam commissioned what would become the Bull-Swanson Report (1973), which acted as the basis for declarations by the Commonwealth Minister for Education in 1974 that a new university would be established in Campbelltown. Unfortunately, the dismissal of the Whitlam government the next year, the instability of New South Wales government with the resignation of Sir Robert Askin, and need for restraint in public spending in every government which followed, meant that succeeding federal governments were not inclined to fund, and state governments not inclined to enact, something is hugely expensive as a new university. Reports by working parties of the Commonwealth Tertiary Education Commission, however, indicated the 'gross underprovision' of higher educational opportunity in the West, requiring a Hawke government committed to greater social equity to do something.

In the meantime, the Higher Education Board in New South Wales had slowly developing plan to 'bootstrap' at least one of Western Sydney's CAE's into a university by stages. When the (Labor) federal Education Minister (Susan Ryan) approach to New South Wales (Labor) government of Neville Wran about establishing further technical education in the West, Wran seized upon the issue as one of states rights, and as a major project which would demonstrate Labor's commitment to the West. Another technical college would not suffice -- the state would convene an enquiry, and then act upon the results of an enquiry by legislating for a new University of the West. Whereas Gough Whitlam had had the money, but not the legislative power to establish a university in NSW, Neville Wran had the legislative power but no untied access to federal funding. The Parry Report of (1985) (named after the committee's chair and head of the Higher Education Board, R. E. Parry) repeated CTEC's observations about western Sydney underprivilege, and proposed that a merger of two of the existing CAEs in the West would provide a cost-effective way of dealing with the impasse.

Along the way, both state and federal government's obtained an idea as to just how passionate and organized the residents of Western Sydney were about providing their children with opportunities for higher education. The wrangling between State and Commonwealth delayed the project for another three years, but eventually the University of Western Sydney achieved legislative form in November 1988, coming into effective existence on 1 January 1989. These pages provide an insight into some of the People, Places and Events which helped give birth to what one protagonist called 'Australia's first major enterprise in higher education in the 21st century.'