Fighting to undo a deal: identifying and resisting the financialization of the WestConnex motorway, Sydney, Australia.

Abstract

WestConnex is a highly controversial urban toll motorway currently being built in Sydney. This article examines how the deals behind WestConnex were assembled in private and contested in public. It reveals how a new model of financialization was developed in response to earlier controversies around Sydney’s expanding network of private toll motorways, only to become itself embroiled in major opposition and protests against the project on various fronts, from the impacts of demolition to concerns about air pollution. One important strand of the protests involved activists and politicians coming together to share understanding and information about the deals behind WestConnex in order to develop strategies to ‘undo the deal’.