Federal election: The battle for western Sydney

“I've always been brought up to believe in the Liberals,” he says.

The Hourani family run a small take-away business in the western Sydney suburb of Blacktown, within the electorate of Greenway. It's one of the most marginal seats in NSW, and every vote will count. Labor MP Michelle Rowland currently holds the seat by a tiny margin.

Jon Hourani says he's made up his mind, but says there's one thing Kevin Rudd could do to change it.

“My main priority is to reduce the cost of living. And if he can do that, he will win my vote,” he says.

Political analyst David Burchell from the University of Western Sydney says voter reactions in the hugely diverse, two-million strong chunk of Sydney known as “the west” are critically important this federal election.

“It's really the secret to Sydney staying a Labor city or turning into a Liberal city, and it's looked more like a Liberal city in recent years,” he says.

“I think the other thing that people outside Sydney need to remember about Sydney is that it's traditionally been a Labor city.

“Labor has often had historically free rein of three quarters two thirds of the city. That's not true anymore.”

The party has consistently retained seats such as McMahon, Werriwa and Fowler for at least the past three decades, but all lost ground to the Coalition in 2010. Each of those once-safe Labor seats is now currently held by a margin of less than 10 per cent, and considered at risk in this year's election.

Dr Burchell says as the western suburbs of Sydney grows and demographics change, Labor can no longer rely on locked-in voting patterns for guaranteed votes.

“One of the striking things about Australian political life has been the growth of swinging voters, particularly in the outer suburbs where people have not lived in the same place their entire lives, they're often some distance from their families, they don't feel tied down to old systems of family voting like their parents would have done,” he says.