Mega transport projects fail to win voters in ‘Sydney’s Paris’

Parramatta has been called the Paris of western Sydney, bolstered by massive government spending, but the NSW election has reinforced a view that voters seldom reward governments for building mega projects.

The Liberal Party lost the seat at the geographic heart of Sydney to Labor’s Donna Davis despite a new stadium, and the prospect of a multibillion-dollar light rail line, the Metro West rail link and the Powerhouse museum opening in the coming years.

Former NSW transport minister Andrew Constance, who oversaw a host of mega projects, said cost-of-living pressures were by far the biggest issue on voters’ minds in Parramatta, which had a large proportion of renters who were more exposed to higher living costs.

“Cost of living was the number one issue that drove people with their vote. People are scared right now after 10 interest rate rises and food prices have gone up astronomically,” he said.

Speaking on Nine’s election night TV panel on Saturday, former premier Mike Baird said Parramatta had become the Paris of western Sydney, given the projects that were transforming the city.

Despite multibillion-dollar infrastructure spending, internal Liberal polling in the lead-up to the election had been showing that Parramatta would be difficult to retain because of the surge in renters, according to a senior Perrottet government source.

Constance said mega projects, which took years to build, did not translate into votes at the ballot box, and the Coalition government’s focus had been on the long term when it committed to them.

Labor repeatedly targeted the cost of tolls during the election campaign, and Constance said motorway charges flowed through into voters’ concerns about cost of living despite a toll subsidy scheme for frequent users.

Labor roads spokesman John Graham said Saturday’s poll was the first election in a long time to be dominated by cost-of-living concerns to such an extent.

“There was a time when the public mood was to invest in infrastructure but the mood at the moment is that it’s time to invest in human capital,” he said, citing Labor’s vow to scrap the Coalition’s public sector wages cap.

However, Constance warned that the state’s massive infrastructure pipeline, which had turbocharged the economy and employed tens of thousands of people, threatened to stagnate next decade because Labor had vowed to cancel projects such as the Northern Beaches Link motorway.

“The era of mega projects is over ... because Chris Minns has indicated that. We have built more than anybody in the state’s history over the last 12 years,” he said of the Coalition government, citing new metro rail and light rail lines, as well as motorways and stadiums.

Held by former high-profile minster Stuart Ayres, Penrith is another Liberal-held seat to fall to Labor, despite the Coalition promising to rebuild the western Sydney electorate’s stadium for $300 million.

Business Western Sydney executive director David Borger said large projects “rarely pull a vote” but it would be wrong to assume that the election results were a vote against infrastructure.

“Mega projects are done because they are the right thing to do. The fact that people voted for Labor doesn’t mean that they didn’t appreciate the projects,” he said.

Borger, a former Parramatta lord mayor and Labor minister, said the election outcome in Parramatta reflected the fact that cost of living and housing affordability were top of voters’ minds.

“Housing is just out of reach of a generation, and it probably wasn’t 12 years ago,” he said.

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