Election 2022: Sweet welcome for Labor’s wealthy blow-in Andrew Charlton

Andrew Charlton left his $16m mansion, living in North Parramatta for about four weeks and throwing himself into the area with gusto.

Labor candidate for Parramatta Andrew Charlton poses for a fan photo at the Sweet Land patisserie in Harris Park in Sydney’s west. Picture: Britta Campion

He’s the high-profile economics consultant and former adviser to Kevin Rudd who left his $16m mansion to run as Labor candidate in the hotly contested electorate of Parramatta.

Andrew Charlton, 43, has been living in North Parramatta for about four weeks and has thrown himself into the area with gusto, giving out his personal phone number to constituents he meets on the hustings.

The suburb of Harris Park at least seems to have embraced Mr Charlton, founder of consultancy firm AlphaBeta and a former ­adviser for Wesfarmers.

The scent of spices fried in ghee wafts down Wigram Street as business owners call out ­“Andrew” and offer him free drinks and sweets and momos.

“I owe a lot of money to Sweet Land,” Mr Charlton said on Friday at his local coffee spot as he ate a Lebanese pastry.

His attempts to pay are in vain.

Beneath the cuff of Mr Charlton’s crisp suit jacket is a red and yellow bracelet from the BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir temple in Rosehill.

Mr Charlton was parachuted into Parramatta after being personally recruited by Opposition Leader Anthony Albanese to replace retiring MP Julie Owens.

A number of local Labor Party members were knocked back for preselection.

Labor holds the seat on a margin of 3.5 per cent on two-party preferred terms after suffering a swing of 4.17 per cent at the 2019 election. Scott Morrison has ­visited the electorate five times to support his captain’s pick Maria Kovacic.

Ms Kovacic’s campaign did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.

Also running as an independent candidate is former Cumberland City mayor Steve Christou.

Mr Charlton has been criticised by the Prime Minister for not representing western Sydney and on Thursday he was splashed across the front page of The Daily Telegraph for failing to name three eateries in the electorate.

But Mr Charlton said he does have some connection to the area. He was born in Kenthurst, about 20km north of Parramatta. His mother worked as a teacher in the electorate and his father worked as an engineer at the Rheem factory in Rydalmere.

It was the same factory from where Mr Morrison attacked Mr Charlton for not being from western Sydney. “That factory is shrinking and letting go of up to a third of its workforce – he (Mr Morrison) did the marketing spin and didn’t ­actually engage with workers in that factory,” he said. “Secondly, my dad used to work in that factory.”

There’s no escaping that Mr Charlton is a wealthy white man running in an aspirational electorate where most constituents couldn’t drop $2m on a house to contest an election. About 30 per cent of the population in the suburb of Parramatta were born in India, according to the last census; 12 per cent were born in China.

But Mr Charlton said people wanted to know how his extensive experience in economics and public policy could help them ­address rising costs of living.

“When you talk to everybody from a family struggling to make ends meet as the cost of living is going up in North Parramatta to Sanjay from the sari shop down the road, the question is what are you going to do?” he said.

The last time Mr Charlton was in parliament was when he worked as an adviser to Mr Rudd. He left when Mr Rudd’s prime ministership ended the first time.

“I was really proud to work in that Labor government,” Mr Charlton said. He cited the NDIS, the NBN, supporting the car industry, signing the Kyoto protocol and Labor’s management of the economy during the GFC as achievements.

Mr Rudd recently joined him out on the hustings in Parramatta and Mr Albanese made his first visit to the electorate on Friday night to attend a Hindu community dinner.