Unrest in west pre-poll: ‘they blew area up’

NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet will battle to win voters weary of struggling services, but residents in key western Sydney seats are predicting Labor will return to office.

Joe Campisi with employees Lora Marra and Angela Simmone, right. Picture: John Feder

When Joe Campisi – owner of Campisi Butchery in West Hoxton, on Sydney’s sprawling southwestern fringe – casts his ballot for Labor at the NSW election on March 25, he will be defying his traditional sense of politics.

But his vote won’t be because of Chris Minns. “Who?” he replies, when asked for his opinion of the NSW Labor leader.

The basis for upturning the 65-year-old’s usual Liberal vote is twofold: first, the local Labor candidate for Leppington, Nathan Hagarty; then Campisi’s belief that essential services have buckled as the government’s infrastructure spend has accelerated Sydney’s urban sprawl.

The once quiet streets of West Hoxton are gridlocked by traffic that has accompanied the influx of development, disrupting Campisi and his brother Tony’s thriving small business. The only person to have helped? Hagarty, while he was a councillor on Liverpool City Council.

After 12 years in power, the ­Coalition under Premier Dominic Perrottet is asking for another four. Labor has been aided by an electorate redistribution that has cut the net gain needed to claim a majority from 11 seats to nine.

Of the 12 seats held by the ­Coalition on less than an 8 per cent margin, eight are in Sydney’s southwest and western beltway. Two – Penrith and East Hills – are on less than a 1 per cent margin.

Conversely, winning the newly established, notionally Labor seat of Leppington, which encompasses Campisi’s store, while limiting Labor’s incursion into the once ­ignored western Sydney will be vital to Perrottet’s efforts to retain government.

When the Barry O’Farrell-led Coalition swept to power in 2011 with a net gain of 34 seats, 15 were in western and southern Sydney.

The Coalition goes into the election with a notional minority of 46 seats, including two seats held by former Liberal MPs who sit as independents. Even assuming these seats are won back, the Perrottet government must secure a net gain of at least one more seat to secure a majority.

Coalition challenges

The problem will be convincing people such as Campisi they deserve another go. After waiting 11 hours overnight to see a doctor at Liverpool Hospital – an ordeal that ended only because he gave up and came home – he thinks the ­Coalition has had its chance.

“They blew the area up and they’re still doing development. But the infrastructure is like it was 30 years ago … They’ve been there for a long time. I can’t see why they couldn’t have done some of those things,” he says.

Paradoxically, Centre for Western Sydney director Andy Marks says despite the Coalition government investing in a steady pipeline of motorways, an airport and a metro in Sydney’s west, the Coalition’s vote has been declining since 2015, suggesting the tens of billions of dollars spent have not translated into votes.

“If we judge the last two elections on western Sydney alone, Labor would have been returned to office,” Marks says.

Helene Nakat Badaoui with client Jora Hakim. Picture: John Feder

“So that leads you to suspect that people don’t sense in many parts of western Sydney that these new roads and these new pieces of built infrastructure are making their lives better.”

The oft-repeated axiom that state elections are won on service delivery is still clear, but with much of the promised infrastructure still under construction, the by-product of these investments – housing supply, schools and hospitals struggling to meet demand – have eroded trust in the government.

Perrottet’s re-election pitch has centred on successive Coalition governments delivering this infrastructure pipeline; ironically, this vision for Sydney’s future ultim­ately could be his downfall.

Auburn Hospital theatre nurse Audrey Figues has seen first-hand how pressures on existing staff have been compounded by people leaving the industry in droves, which she claims has led to ser­vices suffering as a consequence.

She says the current government is blind to the problems confronting the healthcare system. “It’s a different scenario when you ask the healthcare workers, or the patients who are not getting the appropriate treatment as a result of these staffing shortages,” she says, naming safe nurse to patient ratios as her No. 1 voting priority.

Campaigning on a traditional platform of education, health and cost of living, Labor has zeroed in on a string of seats across Sydney’s west and southwest, with Liberal strategists most concerned about former trade minister Stuart Ayres’ seat of Penrith, East Hills, Parramatta and Holsworthy.

 

Yet beyond those four districts the electoral equation becomes more complicated for Labor. “It’s going to be much tighter than ­people anticipated,” Marks says.

Jeffrey Yeh, co-owner of the Rydalmere-based health pharmaceuticals manufacturing firm Homart, says while the state government has invested more energy into western Sydney across the past decade, evidence of progress remains hard to find.

“There are some – like the Badgerys Creek airport, that’s finally under construction; and the light rail in Parramatta – but then it’s still progressing very, very slowly,” he says.

Despite supporting retiring Liberal Parramatta MP Geoff Lee at the previous two elections, Yeh says he will judge each party on its merits, focusing on who provides more business, through payroll tax and easing the burden of acute ­labour shortages.

Economic pitch

Key to the Coalition’s narrow pathway to retaining minority government will be convincing undecided voters such as Helene Nakat Badaoui, owner of the Hair Room in Parramatta, that the government is best placed to handle the precarious economic situation confronting the state.

Amid spiking interest rates, inflation and the risk of recession, Nakat Badaoui, 55, fears her business will be the canary in the coalmine for any economic downturn, and while she’s looking for government support to insulate her business, she has little faith in ­either party delivering.

“Honestly, I don’t really feel like any of them get the job done,” she says. “Yeah, they all talk about getting the job done. But I feel like they just take over the problem.”

Nakat Badaoui’s cynicism is not isolated and it presents a troubling picture for Perrottet, Western Sydney Women founding director Amanda Rose says.

The advocacy group recently did an online survey of 1000 women: 70 per cent said their concerns were not being heard by the current state government. In the electorates of East Hills and Penrith, nearly 43 per cent said they planned to vote for the ALP; none said they would vote Liberal. Zero.

“It’s because, let’s face it, most of the time politicians, especially in western Sydney, only show up when it’s election time,” Rose says.

The Liberal Party’s chances in Parramatta have not been helped by delays in selecting its candidate, Katie Mullens. Running against Parramatta lord mayor Donna Davis on a trimmed 6.5 per cent margin, Mullens was selected only mid-last month, depriving her of vital campaigning time.

Despite her cynicism, Nakat Badaoui welcomes the government’s pokies reform – turning the state’s almost 90,000 machines cashless by 2029 – saying the lack of action on problem gaming has been one of her “biggest qualms”.

She is sceptical of Labor’s year-long trial of 500 poker machines, calling for broader and swifter implementation of harm minimisation measures across all forms of gambling. “It’s not rocket science,” she says. “It’s destroying people’s lives everywhere.”

Campisi concedes the problems Perrottet faces are ones every premier of either political persuasion has grappled with, but after more than a decade of the Coalition in power, he thinks it’s time to give Minns and Labor a chance: “These guys aren’t doing it, so let’s hope the next ones will.”