It was a "landmark day" on Monday, according to Dubbo MP Troy Grant with the launch of the first regional plan for Orana and the Central West.
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Mr Grant was joined by Planning Minister Rob Stokes and Parliamentary Secretary for Western NSW Sarah Mitchell to launch the plan, which will set out the vision for 20 local government areas across the next two decades.
"[It's] an important day, a landmark day, where once again government is going to the community, to industry to business to talk about what their region, the Central West and Orana needs to look like in regards to planning for the future," Mr Grant said.
There are four goals of the plan: establishing a growing and diverse regional economy; having strong freight transport and utility infrastructure networks; protecting and enhancing agricultural land and natural resources; and creating strong communities that cater for the region's changing population.
"As we're getting older we're also staying healthier for longer as well but it does point to new accommodation needs in aged housing as well as growth in aged care and health services," Mr Stokes said.
There was also predicted growth in agriculture, mining, tourism and manufacturing, he said and as public needed to reap the benefits of that growth.
Currently, the plan is a draft. The community are able to make submissions until Monday, July 4.
Ms Mitchell strongly encouraged people to have input into the plan.
"Any impediments, anything that they think that we've missed or they'd like to add, it's a really good opportunity for the local community to be involved in this process," she said.
Mr Stokes said governments were going to make decisions in the future on where to invest based on where people wanted growth to occur.
"Planning is about how we use the resources we have available to us in the most efficient way possible to make people's lives better, so we base that on the physical resources we have, the human resources we have, where our existing centres are and what we are doing in the region," he said.
Submissions can be made at planning.nsw.gov.au/centralwestandorana.