Who wins the 2016 election may rest in western Sydney’s outer-suburban electorates. But whether the prime minister can appeal to the same voters Howard once wooed remains a great unknown

“If we hold this seat then we will be returned to government,” Malcolm Turnbull said in Lindsay last week. He spent Thursday in another must-win seat, Macarthur. It was already the prime minister’s third visit to the region in campaign 2016. As in every election of the past two decades, western Sydney is talismanic.

Partly this is down to numbers: a dozen seats comprise an area roughly six times the size of Greater London and home to one in 10 Australians. Seven are marginal and at least three – Lindsay, Macarthur and Macquarie, all held by the Liberals – are seriously in play on 2 July. The region’s residents are, in the words of Centre for Western Sydney director Phillip O’Neill, “ballot pencil assassins”.

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But western Sydney occupies a symbolic place too, where political and media elites – Mark Latham chief among them – imagine “real Australia” lies. That belief has served as a warning for Labor since swaths of its base deserted the Keating government for John Howard in 1996. “Howard’s battlers” helped entrench the Liberals in government for 11 years. Seats such as Macarthur have never returned to Labor hands. Whether Turnbull can appeal to these same voters is one of the great unknowns of election 2016.

“He’s polished,” says Litsa, a Campbelltown small businesswoman. “Is he different from the usual politician? Probably not.”

Joe, a Campbelltown tow-truck driver, is also cynical. “I haven’t followed politics since Mr Howard, because everything was perfect then as far as I’m concerned,” he says. “He stopped the boats, had plenty of money in the bank.”

The 73-year-old is less sold on Turnbull: “He’s not much different from Labor.” On the verge of retirement, he is spooked – perhaps needlessly – by plans to close a superannuation tax loophole. (“My accountant says, no, it won’t worry you. Not enough money, he reckons.”)



Last week at the Penrith regional gallery the prime minister moved easily through a morning tea of small businesswomen and young mothers, telling one: “Everything we’re doing is aimed at supporting you.”

But a deeper connection to the region may elude him. Though every political figure is, to some extent, removed from middle Australian reality, Howard at least projected a suburban commonness. Both men are members of Sydney’s exclusive, male-only Australian Club, but Turnbull looks it.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest An anti-government demonstrator holds a placard outside Windsor RSL in western Sydney ahead of the leaders’ debate on 13 May. Photograph: Mark Metcalfe/Getty Images

Last week’s visit to western Sydney ended poorly, a planned walk to meet voters at Westfield cancelled after an acrimonious media conference. The prime minister described by Tony Abbott’s former chief of staff, Peta Credlin, as “Mr Harbourside Mansion” beat a retreat to central Sydney, the Daily Telegraph told its readers in its report of the campaign stop. A Galaxy poll in the same newspaper on Monday found Liberal support holding in key seats such as Lindsay and Macarthur, but broad agreement that Labor’s Bill Shorten would be better for western Sydney.

Popular discourse lumps the area together, but the electorates of Sydney’s outer west are “incredibly diverse”, says Professor James Arvanitakis, a sociologist at Western Sydney University.

Smith is the most common surname in Penrith, one part of Lindsay. In Blacktown, part of the neighbouring electorate of Chifley, it’s Singh. Similarly, Arvanitakis says, “you’ve got streets in Parramatta that are really wealthy and then pockets of extreme disadvantage in places like Macquarie Fields”.

Policies for the region are too “often talked about in this holistic way”, he says. “But in reality, a rail link in Parramatta means nothing to people in Bankstown, waiting an hour for the bus. It’s an incredibly multicultural region that has extremes of wealth and poverty.”

That said, catering for a population growing faster than anywhere in the country – expected to swell to three million by 2036 – is a region-wide challenge. New resident numbers significantly outstrip new jobs, and more than 416,000 people will be commuting to work from the area within two decades. WSU researchers warn that will “put enormous pressure on economic productivity [with] highly significant negative impacts on family life, and on residents’ health and living conditions”.

In response, the federal and state governments are spending $3.6bn to build and upgrade roads to the region, and have committed to building a second airport at Badgerys Creek by 2026. Turnbull also used a March trip to Parramatta to talk up the “30-minute city”, a modish design concept where residents work, learn and socialise within a short commute of their homes. But the fast-rail link that could realise his vision was at least three decades away, he said.

That’s little help to Fiona Scott, defending a 3% margin in Lindsay, nor in the Liberals’ less prominent but more vulnerable seats. Labor once needed an 11% swing to claim Macarthur in the south-west, but successive electoral boundary changes have that margin down to 3.3%. “The strong Liberal heartland of Macarthur has been cut out,” election analyst Ben Raue says.

Both Bill Shorten and Turnbull visited the seat this week, each promising $50m to upgrade Appin Road, a major and much-neglected artery.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Malcolm Turnbull with Liberal MP Fiona Scott, who holds the seat of Lindsay by a margin of 3%. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

Macquarie (4.5% margin), in the north-west, is a pairing of the safely Liberal Hawkesbury region with the strongly Labor Blue Mountains. But strong opposition to the Baird government plans to amalgamate Hawkesbury’s council – now dropped – may give Labor’s Susan Templeman the edge over incumbent Louise Markus. A Teachers’ Federation-commissioned poll in April put the major parties at 50-50 in Macquarie, but suggested a failure to adhere to the Gonski funding model – confirmed in the May budget – could cost the Liberals the seat.

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At less risk this time are marginal Labor seats such as Greenway (3% margin) – held against the odds in 2013 by the popular Michelle Rowland – or Parramatta (1.6%), where the Liberals only this month selected a candidate. “The Liberals won’t be trying to win seats as much as hold them,” Raue says.

Whatever the result, few MPs in the region can look forward to long-term job stability. As its population and economy transform, western Sydney’s marginals will stay volatile. But Arvanitakis sees another factor at work, too.

“Western Sydney is a reflection of the electorate across Australia, where we’ve gone away from dyed-in-the-wool Labor and Liberal voters, to picking and choosing,” he says. People don’t join parties any more, but nor do they join churches or clubs. Voting has become, like so much else, “a retail experience”.

• This article was amended on 23 May 2016 to correct the name of the Centre for Western Sydney director to Phillip O’Neill.