KEY POINTS:
Sydney has become the battleground city for the 2007 federal election. This is so for two overwhelming reasons: votes and money.
The history of the Australian Federation has always seen the party which polled a majority of votes in Greater Sydney ultimately go on and win New South Wales and leverage this bloc of seats to win a majority in the House of Representatives. This is as true of Coalition as of Labor Governments.
Also, as the nation's financial capital, corporate life is concentrated in the Sydney CBD. Given the costs of campaigning, it is corporate dollars which fuel the parties' engines on both sides of the aisle. Hence the battle is as much over filling the war chests as it is over filling ballot boxes.
Western Sydney, in particular, is rich in seats. It has made and unmade Prime Ministers. Gough Whitlam in 1972 was able to ride a wave of a desire for change in the suburbs on the perimeters of the cities, for which he had campaigned so long and so diligently. He represented the outer Western Sydney seat of Werriwa. When the tide changed, his Government was broken. The same was true of Paul Keating and it may equally turn out to be true of John Howard.
In 1996, the Liberals won seats in Western Sydney such as the bellwether electorate of Lindsay, held by Jackie Kelly, who went on to be Howard's Sports Minister. It was the new Prime Minister himself who coined the expression "Howard Battlers" to describe those voters who had often been Labor supporters, who moved across the column, having become tired of the perception of an elite agenda for Federal Labor, which the critics argued consisted of Republicanism, reconciliation with indigenous people and engagement with East Asia. Not much to apologise for in an agenda of that kind of course, but it was skilfully manipulated for maximum electoral impact in the Greater West.
Since Gough Whitlam's landmark launch of his 1972 campaign at the Blacktown Town Hall, where "It's Time" entered Australian political folklore, Western Sydney has been pockmarked by staged political events. Kevin Rudd returned to this turf just a few days ago, to launch Federal Labor's 2007 campaign unofficially, centred on the theme "New Leadership". It was staged at Penrith.
All the signs suggest a shift in mood in Western Sydney. Some of the voters who sustained four Howard Governments are changing their views. Above all, WorkChoices, the Coalition's controversial deregulation of the Australian workplace, has altered perceptions of the conservative parties. Among the battlers are aspirational voters, who work in trades and who rely upon shift and penalty loadings; overtime and other traditional industrial conditions. Threaten those conditions and people move their voting intentions very smartly.
So there are seats in play. Significantly, Jackie Kelly is retiring. In an arc of seats from Dobell on the central coast of New South Wales to Macarthur, southwest of Sydney, the war has begun.
The battle must be resourced. And corporate Sydney is being asked to dig deep.
There are the public events, where seats at fundraising initiatives range from A$250 ($290) to A$10,000. At a forthcoming NSW ALP fundraiser, the discount rate is $10,000 for a table.
Mirroring this, the private events in the homes of sympathisers, where Prime Minister or Treasurer or Opposition Leader command $5,000 to $10,000 for a seat, are increasingly popular with the well-connected.
Then there are the auctions. The parties auction just about anything from sporting memorabilia to American political trivia. Golf days with senior political figures are popular.
The fundraising frenzy has reached such a point that one senior Sydney corporate businessman has mused that he would be happy to pay a premium for a table if only he were not required to attend.
Auctions at fundraisers, by both sides, bring a new meaning to the term "retail politics".
To put matters in perspective, there is public funding of federal election campaigns which will see millions of dollars flow to all the serious political contenders based on a formula of A$2.10 per eligible first preference vote. And, under the law, all substantial fundraising is to be disclosed, by parties and donors.
The parties also continue to rely upon traditional supporters from the Liberal 500 Club of committed contributors to the Trade Union Movement for the Labor Party. But business has become the political paymaster. That's a simple reality. The cost of politics makes it so, with the NSW Labor Party reporting political expenditures of A$12.5 million to the Australian Electoral Commission for 2005-6 and the Liberals in the same state, some A$9 million.
So the parties have had to become far more creative. Cocktail parties where luminaries such as former PM Bob Hawke are guests of honour, are supplemented by boxes at football finals. This is the ultimate Australian marriage made in heaven: sport wedded to politics.
So while the constituents of Western Sydney will be bombarded with messages in the great urban tracts, in the CBD the likely contributors are bombarded with invitations to political events. The candidates are at it. The parties, at both state and federal levels, are at it. It's possible now to attend breakfast, lunch and dinner with a politician of your choice, provided your cheque book can stomach it. In the most critical seats, such as Bennelong (held by Prime Minister John Howard) or Wentworth (held by Environment Minister Malcolm Turnbull), even greater amounts will be spent by both sides. By election day, no doubt will remain about just who and what is on offer.
The electoral pendulum has always been an invaluable guide in Australian politics, demonstrating the marginality of the seats being contested. Of more recent times, this has been supplemented by the bookmakers' odds being offered in the Northern Territory, where it is legal to place bets on election outcomes. It's not so far away that a contributors' guide may be published for Australian politics. This would show the significance of seats, judging by how much money the parties spent on the contests at the previous general Election. Whichever way you look at this next federal election, from votes to dollars, Greater Sydney is going to be at the core. It's here that the next Australian Government will be decided.
* Stephen Loosley, a former federal president of the Labor Party and Australian senator, chairs business advocacy group Committee for Sydney.
