A photograph showing a mother pushing a pram along an apparently poorly developed street in the Sydney suburb of Austral, near Leppington, has gone viral, prompting claims from social media users that the area resembles a "third-world country". The image has fuelled debate about the standard of infrastructure in Sydney's rapidly growing south-western fringe, where new housing estates have often outpaced the roads, footpaths and drainage needed to support them.

The suburb sits within the Leppington growth area, one of several rezoned sites where thousands of new homes have been built in recent years to ease Sydney's housing shortage. Residents and commentators have pointed to unfinished or unsealed footpaths and a lack of basic amenities as evidence that development has been allowed to proceed faster than essential infrastructure can be delivered, reigniting long-running criticism of urban planning in Sydney's outer suburbs.