Fairfield City Council

the [[Local government in Australia

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

A few small areas of the original bushland remain, including examples of Cumberland Plain Woodland, which is listed under the Threatened Species Conservation Act, and the Cooks River/Castlereagh Ironbark ecological community. There are 580 parks (60 of which are major parks), including one of the largest urban parks in the world, Western Sydney Parklands, which has a precinct that lies in the Fairfield area, called the Western Sydney Regional Park. Fairfield City is mainly residential in nature with large scale industrial estates at Wetherill Park and Smithfield. Fairfield Showground is an important cultural venue. Prominent roads such as Cumberland Highway and The Horsley Drive wind through it.

For more than 30,000 years, Aboriginal people from the Cabrogal–Gandangara 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, 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 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. In April 2024, the first terrorist attack in Western Sydney's soil occurred at a Wakeley church, where an Islamic extremist stabbed bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel and five others, though all survived the attack.

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, Australian Wool Handlers, Qube and Hume Building Products.

Election Seats (including directly elected mayors) Notes Ind. Liberal Women's Official Labour Progress 1953 6 0 2 6 1 2004 9 3 0 1 0 2008 8 4 0 0 1 2012 7 4 1 1 2016 6 3 0 4 2021 3 0 3 7 Fairfield Ward and Cabravale Ward merged to create Fairfield/Cabravale Ward

NameTermNotes George Edward Young 28 February 1889 – 1 September 1891 Francis Atkin Kenyon 1 September 1891 – 4 November 1892 Edward Farr 4 November 1892 – 17 July 1900 Richard Henry Stokes Dummett 17 July 1900 – 3 April 1916 George Davis 3 April 1916 – 1 August 1942 William James Witt 1 August 1942 – May 1953 Vic Winton May 1953 – 1976 F. A. Elliott 1976–1986 Terry Barnes 1986 – October 1999 Alan Young October 1999 – date