Home to seven Victorian government ministers, including Deputy Premier Ben Carroll and Treasurer Tim Pallas, Melbourne’s western suburbs are almost entirely represented by Labor MPs.

But results from the 2022 election – despite a Labor landslide victory – showed a swing to the Coalition, proving that sitting MPs shouldn’t take the west for granted.

With unfavourable recent polling showing voters are abandoning the government and growing pressure to can the SRL, the Herald Sun took to the streets in the western suburbs to see how locals were feeling.

Veteran youth worker and western suburbs advocate Graeme Blore said Suburban Rail Loop had left western suburbs residents “feeling betrayed”.

“If the Labor Party continue to neglect the west they may see themselves ousted at the next election,” he said.

He said the SRL was “symptomatic of the contempt” the Allan government shows to “the west and other parts of Melbourne”.

His comments come just a week after senior Labor polling expert Kos Samaras said focus groups in the western suburbs “genuinely feel abandoned” by the state government.

“They see a lot of things being built elsewhere,” he said.

Disability schools

Distressed mothers in Melbourne’s western suburbs fear their children are being left behind as they battle to find specialist schools for kids with disabilities.

Taylors Lakes mum-of-four Cassandra Brewer is considering quitting her job to homeschool her two sons, who are autistic, after being warned they may not be re-accepted into the local developmental school for Year 7.

“If we could keep them at Jackson School we would but the test for high school is next year and I’ve been told that one will likely be above the score and the other will be below, meaning I’ll have to find two different schools for them,” she said.

With her two youngest, seven-year-old twins, in a mainstream school, Ms Brewer said drop-offs and pick ups to three different schools would be “impossible”.

The education support worker said sending her boys to a mainstream school was not an option.

“It’s the bullying aspect,” she said.

“I’m thinking about homeschooling.”

Ms Brewer said the lack of options for parents with kids with disabilities in the west was “disgraceful”.

“We’re being left behind,” she said.

Keilor Downs single mum Maria Kerr has been fighting her own battle to find an appropriate school for her son Julian, 8.

Julian currently attends Western Autistic School in Niddrie, which offers just four years of primary education.

Ms Kerr said the not knowing where she will be able to send her child was “mental torture”.

“It’s extremely overwhelming and distressing,” she said.

“We’re already in a vulnerable situation, feel like no one cares about my son.”

A Victorian government spokesman said $3 billion had been invested in “inclusive education” over the past decade, including upgrades, classroom support and facilities, with eleven specialist schools located in Western Melbourne.

Transport

Fed up workers in Melbourne’s west have no choice but to drive to work, with “third world” transport links to anywhere but the city forcing their hands.

A Myki journey from Sunshine station to Melbourne Airport, which employs over 20,000 people, takes nearly an hour and a half one way.

The arduous route takes you via North Melbourne and Broadmeadows, and involves two trains and a bus, despite the distance between Sunshine and the airport being less than 15km.

A proposed Airport Rail Link, connecting the airport to Sunshine via train, has been delayed by at least four years amid an ongoing stoush with airport executives.

The huge delay has left airport workers from the west like Katalin Kadarjan spending more than an hour in traffic each day.

“An express bus would be good, or a train,” he said.

“It would probably save me money too.”

An airport cafe worker said there was “no way” she would take public transport in its current form.

“I don’t really like driving but I don’t have a choice,” she said.

According to data from the 2021 census, only 5.7 per cent of western residents commuted using public transport.

Victoria University Professor Elmira Jamei said public transport in the west was well behind Melbourne’s east.

“Generally speaking, from Melbourne to Geelong if you don’t have a car, you cannot actually move from one suburb to another,” she said.

“I think one of the main reasons is historical … the infrastructure historically has been mainly on the eastern side (and) the west is trying to catch up.”

Keen advocate for the west Graeme Blore, who has been calling for an express bus route to Melbourne Airport, said the current bus service was “third world”.

A Victorian government spokesman said “record investment” had been delivered to Melbourne’s west, saying the opening of the Metro Tunnel and West Gate Tunnel next year would be a “game changer” for people.

Calls for more police

Residents living in some of the western suburbs hit hardest by crime are crying out for more police resources to combat increasing crime and population rates.

Publicly available data from Victoria Police shows the number of officers serving some of the trouble-plagued western suburbs is far less than those in the eastern suburbs.

The number of residents living in Maribyrnong, Wyndham, Brimbank, Moonee Valley and Melton outweigh those in Kingston, Boroondara, Manningham, Monash and Yarra by nearly 200,000.

But they are serviced by roughly the same amount of full time police officers, with 551 patrolling those western suburbs LGAs and 590 in the eastern LGAs listed.

Latest crime data shows those western suburbs LGAs are also far more impacted by crime than their eastern suburbs counterparts.

There were 52,364 criminal incidents in those western suburb areas in the past 12 months compared to just 39,910 in the east.

Veteran youth worker Graeme Blore, who is running as an independent in the upcoming local government election, said the suburbs in the west desperately needed more assistance.

“Crime is a huge issue out in the west,” he said.

“We need, at the minimum, another 70 officers into Brimbank alone, and the reopening of Keilor Downs police station.”

Taylors Hill resident Rita Matakovi said her nephew and his mates were scared to go to school, saying youth crime in the area was “out of control”.

“They need to have more security, more police around schools and at shopping centres,” she said.

Machete attacks have been reported at shopping centres including Watergardens, Woodgrove, Highpoint, CS Square and Pacific Werribee since mid-April.