AMBITIOUS Sydney should strive to establish a “smart and well educated population” that will “lead Australia” into the future, Luke Foley has declared.

Speaking exclusively to The Daily Telegraph, the state Opposition Leader set out his vision for the city built around education, decentralisation, and promoting the biotech, medical tourism and other industries around the Western Sydney airport.

“Half the jobs our kids will be doing in 20 years’ time haven’t even been invented yet,” Mr Foley said.

“So as Australia’s only global city, Sydney’s got to be at the cutting edge of all that. That means investing in education, partnering with the emerging industries, where jobs growth is going to come.”

Mr Foley for the first time has also committed to seeing through all three stages of the WestConnex if elected in 2019 and said he is committed to a Western Metro line the government has promised from the city to Parramatta.

media_camera “Half the jobs our kids will be doing in 20 years’ time haven’t even been invented yet,” Mr Foley said.

He is prepared to dump the Liberals’ promise of a northern beaches tunnel — which includes the promise of a Western Harbour Road Tunnel — to get this done.

Responding to The Daily Telegraph’s Project Sydney campaign to meet the challenges in our city’s boom areas, Mr Foley saw Western Sydney as key to the future of the city and said the growth should centre around Badgerys Creek.

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“(There’s) talk about biotech, health, medical tourism is a huge opportunity with a new airport and ... (we should) keep building the Westmead health precinct. A lot of the jobs growth will be in health,” he said. “It’s focusing on the high-skilled, hi-tech industries that are global in nature, that’s the importance of the Western Sydney Airport, to connect us to the world.”

And the Labor leader said he wants businesses to head west to the city’s economic powerhouse.

“We’ve got to create half a million additional jobs in greater Western Sydney over the next 25 years and about 800,000 additional jobs across all of metropolitan Sydney.”

media_camera Andrew Clennell presents The Daily Telegraph Project Sydney action plan to State Opposition Leader Luke Foley.

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Adding “Sydney is far more multicultural than the rest of the state and nation”, he committed the Labor government to teaching Asian languages in more schools.

“We’ve got fewer primary school kids studying Chinese here than in Victorian schools despite the size of our Chinese population … Our future economic prosperity lies in doing business with China and with India,” Mr Foley said.

Mr Foley also challenged Premier Gladys Berejiklian on education. “We’ll always move faster than the Liberals (on building schools) because it’s a greater priority for us,” Mr Foley said. “We’re committed to an unprecedented schools building program.”

He pledged to “rebuild TAFE” and work with business to ensure its needs are met.