ELEANOR HALL: Well the Labor Party has for decades regarded Western Sydney as its traditional territory and the party still holds every electorate in the region.
But the Coalition Leader, Tony Abbott, is now claiming the region as Liberal heartland.
The ABC's election analyst, Antony Green, says demographic changes in the region do pose a big challenge for Labor, as Lexi Metherell reports.
LEXI METHERELL: Labor holds every seat in Western Sydney, but the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, says Labor can no longer count on that support.
TONY ABBOTT: This is now the new Liberal heartland because Labor has neglected it for so long. I think this really is the new Liberal heartland and I want to keep it that way.
TONY HADCHITI: Well no longer is western Sydney anyone's heartland, western Sydney has changed.
LEXI METHERELL: Tony Hadchiti is the president of the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils. He says the area's been overlooked by successive federal governments.
TONY HADCHITI: I mean you could probably put it down to, some people put it down to you know the area's been taken for granted. No longer are western Sydney voters going to be taken for granted and I think they proved that over the last couple of elections that we've had.
The demographics have changes, the people have changed, the whole area has changed and now people are starting to see that no longer can you take it for granted. If you want the vote of western Sydney people, you need to come up with the goods.
LEXI METHERELL: Western Sydney is crucial to Labor's hold on government, but some opinion polls are suggesting even its five nominally safe seats in the area are set to fall.
The ABC's election analyst, Antony Green, says the old electoral assumptions can no longer be counted on.
ANTONY GREEN: There are rules breaking in Australia nowadays. Labor - New South Wales was once a Labor state. It's far less so. Victoria was once the jewel in the Liberal crown, it's not any more. Both New South Wales and Victoria, long-term, are moving in opposite directions.
New South Wales is becoming less strong for Labor, Victoria's becoming less strong for the Liberal Party. These things change over time, they're not all going in one direction.
LEXI METHERELL: Antony Green says demographic changes mean western Sydney electorates are no longer rusted onto Labor.
ANTONY GREEN: You go back 20 years, a lot of those people were employed by state electricity authorities, and major government instrumentalities and for them the issue was wages and conditions. With privatisation and out-sourcing, many of those people now no longer work for government bodies, they're all contractors.
Their world view is different and what you're seeing is seats like Hughes and Lindsay. Those sorts of groups, who were once sold for Labor now because of the change in economy no longer necessarily are Labor voters, they've got other economic things which drive them.
What's happening in this election? Well I think there's a long-term problem with jobs in Sydney. Sydney is probably becoming more like New York to America or London to Britain - it's the international city. It's not the sort of city where you have manufacturing and dock and import type jobs the way it used to have.
Those sorts of jobs are going to Brisbane and Melbourne. Sydney's failed to make decisions on things like airports and ports and that sort of infrastructure that would keep those sorts of working class jobs in Sydney.
LEXI METHERELL: You talked about the decline in working class jobs in western Sydney. Can Labor still appeal to those electorates from its sort of union base and from union ideals then, or does Labor need to re-brand as being much more about the contractor and the small business owner to continue that strong appeal in those areas?
ANTONY GREEN: It basically has to, but one of the problems, structurally, of the Labor Party, is its union base doesn't necessarily incorporate those things. You see some unions have not adjusted to privatisation, you saw there used to be a union called the Telecommunications Union, basically became a Telstra union because Optus people didn't join it.
So there's a number of those sorts of issues which have afflicted the labour movement in that it doesn't deal with contractors as well as it deals with people who are employees.
And I think the Labor Party does have to deal with those sorts of issues. People are not rusted on like they used to. There's a long-term decline in the relationship between traditional class structures and voting patterns in Australia.
ELEANOR HALL: That's the ABC's election analyst, Antony Green, ending Lexi Metherell's report.
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