The Fairfield City Council is a local government area in the west of Sydney, in the state of

New South Wales ) , nickname = , image_map = New South Wales in Australia.svg , map_caption = Location of New South Wales in AustraliaCoordinates: , subdivision_type = Country , subdivision_name = Australia , established_title = Before federation , es ...

, Australia. The council was first incorporated as the "Municipal District of Smithfield and Fairfield" on 8 December 1888, and the council's name was changed to the "Municipality of Fairfield" in 1920, before being proclaimed a city in 1979. The City of Fairfield comprises an area of and as of the had a population of . The

Mayor In many countries, a mayor is the highest-ranking official in a municipal government such as that of a city or a town. Worldwide, there is a wide variance in local laws and customs regarding the powers and responsibilities of a mayor as well ...

of the City of Fairfield is Cr. Frank Carbone, the first popularly-elected

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

mayor of Fairfield. Fairfield is considered one of the most ethnically diverse suburbs in Australia. At the 2016 census, the proportion of residents in the Fairfield local government area who stated their ancestry as

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

and Assyrian, was in excess of sixteen times the national average. The area was linguistically diverse, with

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

Assyrian Neo-Aramaic Suret ( syr, ܣܘܪܝܬ) ( �su:rɪtʰor �su:rɪθ, also known as Assyrian or Chaldean, refers to the varieties of Northeastern Neo-Aramaic (NENA) spoken by ethnic Assyrians, including those identifying as religious groups rather than eth ...

, or

Cantonese Cantonese ( zh, t=廣東話, s=广东话, first=t, cy=Gwóngdūng wá) is a language within the Chinese (Sinitic) branch of the Sino-Tibetan languages originating from the city of Guangzhou (historically known as Canton) and its surrounding ar ...

languages spoken in households, and ranged from two times to seventeen times the national averages. The ''Smithfield–Wetherill Park Industrial Estate'' is the largest

industrial estate An industrial park (also known as industrial estate, trading estate) is an area zoned and planned for the purpose of industrial development. An industrial park can be thought of as a more "heavyweight" version of a business park or office park ...

in the Southern Hemisphere and is the centre of manufacturing and distribution in GWS, with more than 1,000 manufacturing, wholesale, transport and service firms.

Geography

A few small areas of the original bushland remain, including examples of

Cumberland Plain Woodland The Cumberland Plain Woodland, or Western Sydney woodland,

, which is listed under the Threatened Species Conservation Act. There are 580 parks (60 of which are major parks), including one of the largest urban parks in the world,

Western Sydney Parklands The Western Sydney Parklands is an urban park system and a nature reserve located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The NSW government has spent around $400 million for the park. The park is governed by the NSW National Parks and Wildlife ...

, which has a precinct that lies in the Fairfield area, called the

Western Sydney Regional Park Western Sydney Regional Park is a large urban park and a nature reserve situated in Western Sydney, Australia within the suburbs of Horsley Park and Abbotsbury.Smithfield. Fairfield Showground is an important cultural venue. Prominent roads such as

Cumberland Highway The Cumberland Highway is a long urban highway located in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The highway links the Pacific Highway (A1/B83) and Pacific Motorway ( M1) at Pearces Corner, Wahroonga in the northeast with the Hume Highway (A22/ ...

and

The Horsley Drive The Horsley Drive is a urban sealed road located in the City of Fairfield in Greater Western Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. The road's northwestern terminus is located at the entrance of Western Sydney Parklands in and its southeastern te ...

wind through it.

Suburbs in the local government area

Suburbs in the City of Fairfield are:

History

SLNSW 13466 Cabramatta Town Hall taken for Building Publishing Co

For more than 30,000 years, Aboriginal people from the Cabrogal–

Gandangara The Gundungurra people, also spelt Gundungara, Gandangarra, Gandangara and other variations, are an Aboriginal Australian people in south-eastern New South Wales, Australia. Their traditional lands include present day Goulburn, Wollondilly Shire ...

tribe have lived in the area. One of Sydney's oldest trees, the Bland Oak, was planted in the 1830s in Carramar. European settlement began early in the 19th century and was supported by railway construction in 1856. At the turn of the century the area had a population of 2,500 people and with fertile soils, produced crops for distribution in Sydney. The council was first incorporated as the "Municipal District of Smithfield and Fairfield" on 8 December 1888, becoming the "Municipality of Smithfield and Fairfield" from 1906. On 26 October 1920, the council's name was changed to the "Municipality of Fairfield", in recognition of the changing centre of business in the council area. Rapid population increase after World War II saw the settlement of many ex-service men and European migrants. Large scale Housing Commission development in the 1950s swelled the population to 38,000. From 1 January 1949, under the '' Local Government (Areas) Act 1948'', the Municipality of Cabramatta and Canley Vale was amalgamated into the Municipality of Fairfield. In the , the population had reached 114,000 and was becoming one of the larger local government areas in New South Wales. On 18 May 1979, the Municipality of Fairfield was granted

city status City status is a symbolic and legal designation given by a national or subnational government. A municipality may receive city status because it already has the qualities of a city, or because it has some special purpose. Historically, city status ...

, becoming the "City of Fairfield". On Friday 29 June, 2001 the former Deputy Mayor of Fairfield and councillor from 1987 to 1998, Phuong Ngo, was convicted of the 1994 murder of the local state MP for Cabramatta (and former Deputy Mayor), John Newman, a crime which has been described as Australia's first political assassination. Ngo's alleged accomplices, Quang Dao and David Dinh, were acquitted and the identity of the killer who shot and fatally wounded Newman remains a mystery. Controversy has arisen in the years since then of the presence of Ngo's name on various council plaques from his time on council. In September 2006, Fairfield Council announced the introduction of a trial ban on spitting in public on

public health Public health is "the science and art of preventing disease, prolonging life and promoting health through the organized efforts and informed choices of society, organizations, public and private, communities and individuals". Analyzing the det ...

grounds. However, it was reported that advice provided to council from NSW Health was that spitting does not impact on the transmission of infectious diseases. The law proved difficult to prosecute.

Heritage listings

The City of Fairfield has a number of heritage-listed sites, including: * Bonnyrigg, Cartwright Street: Bonnyrigg House * Bonnyrigg, Lot 1 Cartwright Street: Male Orphan School land * Fairfield, Great Southern railway: Fairfield railway station, Sydney * Horsley Park, 52–58 Jamieson Close: Horsley complex * Lansvale, Hume Highway: Lansdowne Bridge

Business and industry

Fairfield is a centre of manufacturing and distribution for Greater Western Sydney and home to the Smithfield-Wetherill Park Industrial Estate, which is the largest industrial zone in the Southern Hemisphere. It is also home to the Yennora industrial zone, where key operators in the area include Toll, Woolworths,

Linfox Linfox is an Australian transport and logistics and supply chain business founded in 1956 by Lindsay Fox. History Linfox was established in 1956 by Lindsay Fox as Lindsay Fox Cartage with one truck in Melbourne. In 1958, a contract with Schwep ...

, Australian Wool Handlers,

Qube QUBE was an experimental two-way, multi-programmed cable television system that played a significant role in the history of American interactive television. It was launched in Columbus, Ohio, on December 1, 1977. Highly publicized as a revolutio ...

and Hume Building Products.

Demographics

At the there were people in the Fairfield local government area, of these 49.3 per cent were male and 50.7 per cent were female.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people Indigenous Australians or Australian First Nations are people with familial heritage from, and membership in, the ethnic groups that lived in Australia before British colonisation. They consist of two distinct groups: the Aboriginal peoples ...

made up 0.7 per cent of the population; significantly below the NSW and Australian averages of 2.9 and 2.8 per cent respectively. The median age of people in the City of Fairfield was 36 years; slightly lower than the national median of 38 years. Children aged 0 – 14 years made up 19.1 per cent of the population and people aged 65 years and over made up 13.8 per cent of the population. Of people in the area aged 15 years and over, 48.1 per cent were married and 12.4 per cent were either divorced or separated. Population in the City of Fairfield between the and the declined by 0.78 per cent; and in the subsequent five years to the , population growth was 4.38 per cent. At the 2016 census, the population in the City increased by 5.89 per cent. When compared with total population growth of Australia for the same period, being 8.8 per cent, population growth in the Fairfield local government area was a little over half the national average. The median weekly income for residents within the City of Fairfield was lower than the national average, being one of the factors that place the city in an area of social disadvantage. As at the 2016 census, the influence of

Vietnamese culture The culture of Vietnam (Vietnamese: Văn hoá Việt Nam) is highly multicultural. The early culture in Vietnam started with the Bronze Age Đông Sơn culture considered to be one of its most important progenitors for its Ancient history. Vie ...

and

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

was statistically strong, evidenced by the proportion of residents with

Vietnam Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

ese ancestry (nearly twenty times higher than the national average), the proportion of residents who spoke Vietnamese as either a first or second language (also nearly twenty times higher than the national average), and the proportion of residents who stated a

religious Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatur ...

affiliation with

Catholicism The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

and

Buddhism Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religions, Indian religion or Indian philosophy#Buddhist philosophy, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha. ...

(the latter being in excess of nine times the national average).

Council

Current composition and election method

Fairfield City Council is composed of twelve

Councillor A councillor is an elected representative for a local government council in some countries. Canada Due to the control that the provinces have over their municipal governments, terms that councillors serve vary from province to province. Unl ...

s, including the Mayor, for a fixed four-year term of office. The Mayor has been directly elected since 2004, while the twelve other Councillors are elected proportionally to two separate wards, each electing four Councillors. The most recent election was held on 2 December 2021, and the makeup of the council, including the Mayor, is as follows: Australia Fairfield City Council 2016

The current Council, elected in 2021, in order of election by ward, is:

Mayors

Town Clerks/General Manager/City Managers

Sister cities

* Palmi, Italy *

Zhenjiang Zhenjiang, alternately romanized as Chinkiang, is a prefecture-level city in Jiangsu Province, China. It lies on the southern bank of the Yangtze River near its intersection with the Grand Canal. It is opposite Yangzhou (to its north) and ...

, China

References

External links

* {{NSW Local Government Act 1948, state=collapsed Fairfield Fairfield Hume Highway Fairfield City Council Georges River