NSW will pay more each year in interest on the state's massive debt than it spends on NSW Police and TAFE combined, Premier Chris Minns has revealed.
Mr Minns said the government was on track to record $187 billion worth of debt in the next three years - equal to more than $20,000 per person in NSW - which would cost the state about $7 billion in interest a year.
He said COVID-19 was the most obvious and appropriate reason for the debt but future generations would have to pay it off.
As NSW moved away from its most lucrative export of coal, it would need to look for new ways to service the debt, which Mr Minns said would lie in expanding industries and enterprises in Western Sydney.
"I'm not joking when I say a big part of the wealth and economic prosperity of NSW is still in mining," he told a Western Sydney leaders forum on Thursday.
He said the restrictive policies of countries buying NSW coal and ore - not miners in NSW - was the issue moving forward.
"Even the most ardent supporters of coal understand that it has severe medium-term challenges in securing the export markets of the future," Mr Minns said.
"All our major export markets have committed themselves to zero-emission energy policies in the decades ahead."
With NSW exporting $58 billion worth of coal last year, Mr Minns said the state had a very large hole to fill.
"We've got to fill that gap and I see Western Sydney as a big driver of economic growth," he said.
"Western Sydney carries the economic future of our state and our nation on its back but it does it in a carefree, almost nonchalant way."
He said Western Sydney was already a hub for advanced manufacturing, small and medium-sized enterprises and centres of higher education and research.
"We need young people to lift their gaze slightly and think about what we have that the world needs," Mr Minns said.
