The independent MP for Fowler, Dai Le, firmly believes western Sydney is ripe for a new political movement, similar to Jacqui Lambie’s in Tasmania.
With the Fairfield mayor, Frank Carbone, she has registered a new party based in the west with the ambition of dislodging support for the major parties and installing more “genuine westies” in parliament.
“Our people … pay tolls and taxes, and yet the money doesn’t come back into building services and infrastructure for our community,” Le says.
“We need to come together and build a stronger western Sydney voice for our community.
“The end goal is to have representation for western Sydney, from people who are actually from western Sydney, live in western Sydney, understand the issues of western Sydney.”
However great Le’s belief, political experts are sceptical that such a party is viable, with one warning that success in a single seat does not often guarantee a region-wide mobilisation of support.
According to Le, the creation of the new party is a warning to Labor and the Liberals that parachuting candidates into western Sydney will no longer work, as she proved when she defeated Labor’s Kristina Keneally at the 2022 federal election.
The pair have registered the Dai Le and Frank Carbone Network with the Australian Electoral Commission with the intention of getting Carbone elected into federal parliament.
Le says she and Carbone are different in many ways, but are both “passionate westies” who speak their minds.
She sees the path carved by Lambie in Tasmania as a possible way forward for her and Carbone, and plans to seek her advice.
“We need stronger representation and a stronger voice for western Sydney, just like Tammy [Tyrrell] and Jacqui [Lambie] are doing for Tasmania,” she said. “My intention is to talk with them, see how they’ve done it.”
But Dr Andy Marks, executive director at the Centre for Western Sydney and assistant vice-chancellor at Western Sydney University, isn’t as convinced.
He says recent election results don’t indicate a “groundswell” of support for a party that represents western Sydney alone.
“In the federal election, we saw some really strong swings – above the national average – to the major parties, even the Liberal party and a surge in their favour in western Sydney, with double digit swings to them in some seats,” Marks said.
“It doesn’t seem as though people are screaming for a party that’s been described and you need that kind of groundswell for it to work.
“Western Sydney is incredibly diverse, and it is difficult to see one party – including a potential new one – being representative of the region.”
At both the federal election in 2022 and the New South Wales election in March the region proved pivotal, with key seats falling to Labor and handing them victory.
While Marks believes the area will remain influential, he is sceptical that this will directly benefit independents.
“There is no indication in recent state and federal election results that support for independent candidates is growing across western Sydney,” he says.
“There is certainly enough voting mass across Sydney’s west to turn the result of federal and state elections, as we have seen over the years. But that voting power is highly diverse and generally split between the existing major parties, and primary votes for Labor and Liberal are not dipping in the west at the rate they are elsewhere.
The election analyst Ben Raue, who lives in Sydney’s west, says Le’s election success had much to do with Labor parachuting in Keneally to contest the seat of Fowler.
“If Dai Le had run against your typical Labor candidate, who hadn’t alienated people like Keneally did, she wouldn’t have won,” Raue says. “If Keneally was being challenged by a random, unknown independent, she would have got elected.
“If their goal is to run all over western Sydney and be a western Sydney brand, I think probably they’re getting a bit ahead of themselves and I don’t really know what their agenda is.”
But Raue says Le’s success, alongside that of teal independents federally, is a warning to the major parties..
“Labor will come back. Labor will be more sensible than they were last time,” he says.
“Le has the benefit of incumbency and often independents do strengthen their hand, but she has to do it first.
He says the sentiments the new party are attempting to capitalise on wouldn’t necessarily translate to wider electoral success, but could work on a local level, where Carbone has seen the most success.
“Their agenda has been about … getting things for our local area,” he said. “That works really well when you’re an individual MP like Le.
“Western Sydney is still very much dominated by Labor versus Liberal, but I think there’s something about the Dai Le candidacy and these things are often bubbling along under the surface. But it’s much easier for them to take root in councils than they are to take root in state and federal politics.”
Ultimately, Raue isn’t convinced of the necessity or the potential reach of a new party based in western Sydney, saying these efforts are usually rooted in the ambitions of politicians.
“Politicians famously have giant egos and she wouldn’t be the first politician to think, ‘This success I had in one area, I can roll it out in another area or I can run again.’”
