NSW local government elections: has western Sydney turned right?

A smaller, but not insignificant number of new Liberal voters represent the further consolidation of its base among the mainly white, aspirational voters in the new growth centres of Western Sydney.

In more migrant, working class areas, the rise in the Liberal vote was far less than the fall in Labor's vote. A significant amount of voters in these areas are clearly fed up with Labor but refused to hand their vote to the Liberals.

Many of these votes went to a variety of independent candidates, but where the Greens presented themselves as an alternative, they too saw their vote rise, although arguably less than it could have.

Rather than a change in the air, what we have is a continuation within Western Sydney of the disillusionment with the neoliberal agenda of the two major parties, one the Greens have only partially been able to tap into.

The corporate media and Liberal politician's talk of a big right-wing swing obscures the reality that the Liberals are a long way from convincing most Western Sydney residents of their racist, anti-working class agenda. Instead, they hope to use this campaign to give legitimacy to further attacks by the NSW Liberal government against working class people.

This would seem to be case with the state government's announcement of massive cuts to education in the days after the elections. The public reaction against the move also shows how out of step the campaign is with reality.

A further element in the media campaign, one that has been strongly echoed by Labor leaders, is the attempt to portray voters as having rejected the progressive policies of the Greens.

While Labor's response demonstrates their continued belief that to regain support requires shifting the party further to the right, the actual evidence shows why the Greens should take the opposite approach.

Building on their successes to sink deeper roots into working-class, migrant areas is key not only to increasing the Greens overall vote, but to consolidate it as a genuine left-wing alternative to Labor.

Whether the Liberals succeed or not in carrying out their attacks will depend on the left's ability to unite the dispersed forces that oppose the Liberal agenda and reject Labor's continued drift to the right.

The election results show this not only requires campaigning in the unions, universities and communities, but taking up the task of building a real political alternative capable of challenging the major parties in the streets and at election time.