Local issues and candidates with strong connections to their communities shaped the unusual election results across western Sydney, experts say, with major parties increasing their vote in some areas but being ejected from safe seats in others.
In Fowler, the independent candidate and former councillor Dai Le won against Labor’s Kristina Keneally, overturning a 14% margin.
Le, who was born in Vietnam and came to Australia as an 11-year-old, told Guardian Australia her community was “looking for genuine and real representation” during the election.
“The people understood, at the end of the day, that only the locals understand us, and would fight for better services and federal resources,” she said.
“Ultimately the community has not seen improvements from previous federal representatives, and this time they believe they wanted one of their own to represent them, who is connected to them, and will fight for them, just like other electorates.
On the surface, Le’s win looks like an outlier in the region – a single independent elected among a big swings toward the major parties. But a common theme in the results was that if a candidate engaged with local issues they likely won their seat.
Prof Andy Marks, the director of the research hub the Centre for Western Sydney, said the Covid-19 lockdowns in 2021 during the Delta wave exacerbated a focus on localised issues for people in the region.
“These are areas that felt abandoned by governments – state and federal. They are also home to among the largest numbers of people in low-paid and insecure work, many of them in jobs that could not readily transition to remote work.”
A report from the Centre for Western Sydney released just prior to the election said voters in the region would defy “prediction and conventional political logic”.
It said there was a growing “electoral volatility” in the region, and Marks believes the results confirm that prediction.
“Western Sydney did not behave the way the rest of the country did, with some really strong swings to Labor, in excess of the national average,” Marks said.
“While the national story was of people deserting the major parties, that was not the case in western Sydney.”
Marks said the hyper-localisation of politics in the region was the key determining factor in the seats, with candidates who best engaged with their locality winning their seats.
“Candidates, regardless of party affiliation, that maintained a strong local profile were in general those who attracted the highest primary vote,” Marks said.
“We saw this in the formerly marginal Labor seats of Macquarie and Greenway, where Susan Templeman and Michelle Rowland focused heavily on local issues like bushfires, floods, congestion and local infrastructure. The same was true for the Liberals in Lindsay, where Melissa McIntosh also kept the focus local.
“This differs from inner Sydney seats where national themes of women, sustainability and integrity dominated.”
Marks said the late selection of candidates by the Liberals in seats such as Parramatta “hobbled” their campaign, building cynicism among voters.
“Just as Labor parachuted in candidates, it created a cynicism at the process. Candidates need time to build support and zero in on local issues.”
Ben Raue, an electoral analyst, agrees that the localisation of politics shaped individual races, saying the process had reforged identities.
“People feel more associated with the city or state they live in now. They are reconsidering their political allegiances.”
Some commentators have identified western Sydney as a potential new Liberal heartland, after the party was rejected by voters in the northern and eastern suburbs.
But Raue is not convinced, saying the results did not indicate that the culture wars fostered by the Liberal party during the election, particularly the focus on transgender athletes and the comments made by the Warringah candidate Katherine Deves, changed anything.
He said the Liberal campaign had staked a lot of hope on the results of the marriage equality vote, explaining that areas with high “no” votes were targeted by the Coalition, but with mixed results.
“There is no obvious path for the Liberals. It’s a hard road back,” he said.
“People might have been opposed to transgender athletes, but they did not feel very strongly for it – it did not rank that highly.”
Adam Leto, the executive director of the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue, said the results reflected a growing desire among people in the region to be better represented, and to have their concerns taken seriously.
“In the last four months, lots of locals didn’t feel like they had a voice, especially on chosen candidates. There was a lot of politics playing out. Lots felt frustrated in trying to get traction on key matters,” he said.
“So when candidates were out there saying they were going to act on concerns, that resonated with people, it empowered them.”
Leto listed cost of living, housing affordability, childcare, and access to services and amenities as key issues for locals, things many other communities “take for granted”.
“The priorities of western Sydney families are different to the rest of the city,” he said. “Families are looking at how they can put a house over their head, how to have steady employment.”
Leto said these priorities led voters overall to the major parties, bucking the national trend and demonstrating the area’s political independence.
But the strong negative swing Labor suffered in Fowler lost it the seat for the first time since its creation in 1984.
Keneally reflected on the loss on Sunday, telling Nine’s newspapers she thought it came down to the “impacts of the Covid lockdowns”.
“Those harsh lockdowns engendered an understandable sense of parochialism that the community had been left behind by both major political parties,” she said.
The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, later told Sky News that Labor had to learn from the result.
“You have to learn lessons from an outcome like that – I think the lessons are very clear that the community sent a message,” he said.
