Parramatta – Australia 2025

if they had of gone with the m2 boundary instead of bleeding over into blacktown and cumberland this would have been an easy win for the liberals

I sense Andrew Charlton will get a sophomore surge following some controversies about a captain’s pick and parachuting last election.

I think he may hold but on reduced margin as the CoL hurts and the liberals revival in nsw

Charlton wouldnt know what CoL means hes got about 6 mansions across the north shore of sydney i think. either way hes not doing it tough. I think this will be <1% towards Labor but the Liberals may be able to snag it.

This area does not have enough liberal areas in it to.flip

@ John
Very few federal politicians are doing.it.tough.

@mick not true some politicians have a mortgage just like everyone else and aren’t buying $12m properties and $2m sub penthouses on the riverfront.

@john…. sure some mp s are more wealthy than others.But I stand by my point they are not doing it tough

Awe slightly less than 100k per yr
Politicians base salary $233k pa with no add ons
Office holders pm speaker m8ninisters get at least double the base

Andrew Charlton,competent though he is(in contradistinction to a lot of other ALP members) doesn’t strike me as a person who would have a personal vote.
The reference to a sophomore surge I think is misleading.While it can exist,it is of little assistance when the government is on the nose as the polls indicate.
I think Charlton needs to be in a safer seat.He should have been in the ministry,but isn’t.

Has mp built some personal vote?
He seems a different proposition to
KKK.
There was a slight swing against Labor here in 2022.
This is still centred on the greater Parramatta.
Alp retain

Sophomore surge can still be important when a party is suffering a swing – it’s about doing relatively better than the party’s general swing. So if the ALP is suffering a 4% swing, maybe you only suffer a 2% swing and save your seat.

I don’t think Charlton will have a huge personal vote but he’ll have some.

I agree that Andrew Charlton should have some portfolio at least.

The swing to Labor in 2022 was muted following the departure of long-term member Julie Owens plus the controversy and lateness of his preselection and parachuting. The electorate might have warmed up to him since then.

@sabena the problem is there are no safe seats available most if not all their safe sydney seats are currently occupied.

@mick i say 50/50 here for charlton if he retains it will be under 1% margin.

@votante im sure the people of parramatta are more concerned with CoL something Charlton will know nothing about

As a Parramatta local, it seems like Charlton himself is popular but the Albanese government is on the nose badly. Going to be a fascinating match-up between the Westminster and presidential systems – if one votes as is intended for an MP to represent your area’s concerns, think Charlton wins comfortably enough, but if one’s vote is anti-Albanese, then I think Parramatta could fall to the Coalition. I think John is right – Charlton 50/50, probably retains but by a handful of votes.

@H@wke thanks for that its good to get opinion from the seat in question. The 2022 2pp swing was only 1.07% in a year when labor swept to power and the boundaries have become abit more favourable to the Libs in the redistribution. the CoL crisis is appparent in a seat ike parramatta and combine that with the anti-albo swing does anyone know what the cultural and ethnic background breakdown of this seat is? or where to find it? If Duttons making Majority he’ll likely need Parramatta.

Ben,
I think the problem with what you have said is that the statewide swing against Labor may be more than 4%. In those circumstances, you can do better than the statewide swing, but still lose.Given the ominous signs,3.7% is not looking enough.

@sabena we will have a better view once they start to release state breakdowns for the year

Suspect alp retain

@mick agreed for now atm i have it in the leaning labor column

I wouldn’t rule out either Parramatta or Greenway as a Liberal win. In Parramatta, it will largely come down to those areas in Eastwood and Carlingford which have a large Chinese population and swung heavily last time – will they swing back. And in Greenway, those booths in Riverstone and along Windsor Road that swung very heavily last time – a sort of North West Sydney swing that went into Mitchell and Macquarie as well. Michelle Rowland has been lucky as the Libs have seriously botched Greenway a few times.

@redistributed while Parramatta may flip in my opinion I think Michelle Rowland may hold on for at least one more election. it would likely be a liberal seat had James Diaz not fumbled the ball in 2013.

I think this seat might actually flip Liberal – redistributed actually raised a good point about the Eastwood and Carlingford side of the seat, which only flipped to Labor at the last election because of (assumably) how they felt ScoMo treated the Chinese community in Australia.

Now that he’s gone, seats like Bennelong, Chisholm and Aston are predicted to flip to the Coalition – all seats with a high Asian population. Although competent as others have said, I don’t think Charlton is popular enough to retain them with the Labor Party (unlike perhaps, Sally Sitou or Linda Burney). This phenomena is even more prominent with Jerome Laxale in Bennelong, who has been completely overshadowed by Scott Yung’s campaign. I drive through the seat every week, and work near the area – Laxale has been completely absent whilst Yung has been buying billboard campaigns at Top Ryde, Chatswood etc. however this is a page about Parramatta which may have a different story here.

Either way, I would not be surprised if the Eastwood and Carlingford side ended up flipping heavily to the Coalition – let’s not forget that the areas and booths with the highest Chinese populations (e.g. Reid, Banks, Chisholm, Bennelong) swung substantially more than the statewide swing in 2022. I would take the idea of applying the predicted statewide swing here with a grain of salt – judging by 2022, this seat and Bennelong are likely to swing much more than that in 2025. Just my thoughts

@wombater me and a few others put in a proposal to move parramatta to the m2 with Mitchell had they done this they would absolutely lose parramatta the boundaries adding in parts of Blacktown and Cumberland have saved his bacon here. Still it could still flip.

@John I think the loss of the areas around Auburn to Blaxland combined with the addition of more Liberal-friendly parts of Eastwood etc will really make this seat come to a knife’s edge. It really would depend on how strong Charlton’s personal support is, just like Laxale in Bennelong, the odds are already an uphill battle due to redistribution.

i reckon it will be one the most marginal if not the most marginal seats after the election

A lot will depend on how much of the Chinese vote goes back to the Libs in the northern part. Agree with John – it will be very close either way. Andrew Charlton seems very out of place in the seat – a very odd fit.

@redsitrbuted i imagine thats what blunted the labor swing in 2022. id say its the reason they put those people in at that time. if they tried to put him in in 2019 and 2025 they would have lost the seat

This one is getting overhyped a fair bit. It might look close on the pendulum but there was a clear effect from the 2022 candidate controversy in the heavily Indian parts of this seat – booth results from Wentworthville and Westmead got a swing to the Liberals while a few hundred metres away in McMahon and Greenway those swings were reversed. Charlton by now has managed to establish himself here and shouldn’t have any malus as a candidate. Moreover, it’s not actually as mortgage-heavy as many other outer suburban seats, where rates are more likely to have eroded support for the government, and has a younger profile. I put Werriwa and Greenway at higher risk than this.

If he was in Kingsford Smith, Bennelong, Robertson or even Whitlam it wouldn’t seem so incronguous. Gough Whitlam with a very similar background and educational pedigree did become MP for Werriwa in 1952. That must have been a shock at the time. But then he always lived in his electorate until he went to The Lodge. Of course, if it was 2016 – the ALP could not have been throwing the ‘Mr Harbourside Mansion’ jibe as it would have come straight back.

Parramatta isn’t a working class electorate, it’s very highly educated electorate and decidedly middle-class with lots of white collar workers – especially with the growth of Parramatta CBD. It’s not outer suburban mortgage belt either – it’s very much established middle-ring suburbia. The defining thing about this seat is probably just how multicultural it is.

Redistributed,
When Gough Whitlam was first elected,he lived in Cronulla,which was in his seat.Though not as affluent as now,it was comfortably middle class.
A redistribution of Werriwa moved the seat west,so Gough had to move to Cabramatta.As soon as his political career was over he ceased to live there.

Sabena
Yes you are right I stand corrected. Possibly there is a Whitlam biography that explains why he stayed with Werriwa rather than transferring to the new Hughes in 1955 which took in Cronulla. Werriwa at the time was not much safer than Hughes – though Labor did lose Hughes in 1966.

About Parramatta’s demographics, it’s actually very similar to a large capital city CBD. It’s quite gentrified as there has been a decades-long push to make it Sydney’s CBD or Western Sydney’s CBD.

There’s lots of shiny new infrastructure like the light rail, Parramatta Square and Meriton apartments. The average person is a renter, especially in Parramatta CBD and neighbouring suburbs like Westmead, North Parramatta and Harris Park. There are more white-collar professionals and bachelor degree holders than average.

There are some working-class suburbs like Toongabbie and Constitution Hill. Such areas are not as favourable to Labor as they used to be. There are also suburbs like Oatlands that are super expensive to buy in with an abudance of free-standing homes on decent sized land. They are fetching over $2m.

Places like Toongabbie and Constitution Hill are still very middle class when you compare indicators like income, education etc to the average for Greater Sydney. There are not really any proper working class areas in Parramatta anymore since Granville, Merrylands, Auburn and Guildford are all in Blaxland.