Today I am pleased to continue one-on-one consultation meetings with Westbury community members regarding the preferred site for the new Northern Regional Prison.
It was important to select a preferred site to be able to consult with the community on.
This is the second day of these important meetings which are part of a broader engagement with the Westbury community. The meetings will continue tomorrow (Monday) in Westbury.
These series of meetings are an opportunity to hear firsthand from community members about the preferred site, whatever their view of the project. This is important to inform the decision making process.
I will also be holding an open public meeting at the Westbury Town Hall at 5.30pm tomorrow, 16 December.
As we have said consistently, a final decision about the location of this important development in the region is yet to be made and the Government considers community input critical in this process.
While the Northern Regional Prison is a much-needed facility which will provide for many hundreds of jobs during construction and approximately 250 jobs once operational, the Birralee Road site is, at this stage, a preferred site only.
We remain committed to working through the consultation process, including the social and economic impact assessment currently underway, to determine if the preferred site adjacent to the Valley Central industrial precinct is indeed the best location, to enable this important investment to progress.
We are listening, we are engaging and I look forward to two days of further extensive community consultation.