Greater Independents

Diving a bit further into the conditions that has allowed the Community Independents Project to flourish

The Australian House of Representatives, Canberra. Photo: Melody Ayres-Griffiths

A few days ago I posted an article on the Community Independents Movement in Australia. I had written it with The Atlantic in mind – and for an American audience –but I got no response from the editors. We in Australia tend to think our country is a little more important and interesting than it actually is. But in reality no-one really gives a shit. Or maybe the subject matter is just a little too niche?

My hope was that it would be seen as an interesting phenomenon not because is it about Australia, but because democracy worldwide is in trouble and so I think it’s important for everyone to pay attention to not just the negative trends, but the positive ones that are pushing back and offering paths forward. This is especially important for the United States right now.

While I highlighted two broad pillars that have allowed this movement to flourish – a general suspicion of political parties, and a sense that male politicians are less trustworthy – there are also both more practical and ideological issues that have provided the political openings for these candidates.

While the media with their reductionist tendencies have decided to group them all together under the label “Teals”¹, there are two very distinct conditions in urban and rural seats that need to be explained, and this label is very unhelpful for rural seats.

It should be noted that the movement is a model of political organisation, but falls well short of the criteria of being a political party. It’s rather amusing that those hostile to the movement from major parties are desperate to claim that they are actually a party, but in doing so they are implicitly recognising that parties are on the nose.

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Rural Seats

Australia is a continent-sized landmass, but with a population of just 27 million people. Or, for reference, Australia is the geographic size of the contiguous United States, with four million less people than Texas. Furthermore, 16 million of these people live in the metropolitan areas of just four cities – Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane and Perth. Despite the image that Australia projects to the world of itself as a nation of rough and resilient outback stockmen, the country is actually one of the most urbanised in the world.

Due to their massive size and small populations, rural seats in Australia tend to have unique sets of interests that cannot be neatly mapped onto conventional politics. Often basic service delivery like healthcare, schooling, water, and mobile coverage and broadband is incredibly difficult. The things that urban electorates take for granted can be everyday struggles. Due to this, what these electorates need from their representatives is commitment, understanding, and competence – and the ability to get their foot in the right doors in Canberra. Practical outcomes are far more important than ideology.

Yet due to the basic electoral maths of the country, it is urban areas where the votes are, where the seats are, and therefore where attention is paid. If you’re a rural MP from a major party, sitting on the backbench and on a large electoral margin, a minister (particularly of an opposing party) has no real incentive to take your calls (unless your seat has some mines in it)

If you’re a voter in a rural electorate how to do you overcome these hurdles? You can try and make your seat marginal – create a tight contest between the Labor Party and the Liberal or National parties and you’ll soon find your seat has a lot of attention. Or, you could elect someone from outside of the major parties and get attention this way.

When this happens governments start splashing cash in these electorate in the hope they’ll get the credit for improvements, but the voters interpret this as the effectiveness of having an independent MP. An iron law of Australian politics is that once a seat elects an independent they’re almost impossible to defeat.

While the Community Independents Project made its significant gains last election in urban electorates, this election it looks like gains will be made in rural electorates. The seats most likely to be won are those where independents came a close second last election – these include seat of Wannon in southwest Victoria, Cowper in northern New South Wales, and Calare over the Blue Mountains from Sydney.² But with the vote for the Coalition starting to collapse, more rural seats might be in play.³

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Urban Seats

While rural electorates are fertile soil for the movement, its major success last election was in wealthy urban seats in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. And here there are some distinct philosophical conditions that require a trip back to the formation of the modern Australian state at the start of the 20th Century to fully understand.

Upon federation and the first election in 1901 party politics was far looser. The two largest parties – Free Trade and Protectionist – didn’t function like recognisable parties today. You may have been elected as a Free Trader, but your personal allegiance may be to the leader of the Protectionist Party. The interests of your state may also take precedence over your nominal party.

Except the Labour Party⁴ were also a significant presence in the first parliament, and they very much did function like a modern party. In fact, their policy was absolute party discipline – which remains to this day. If you vote against the agreed party position then you will be expelled from the party. Labour were able to form the world’s first social-democratic government in 1904 (in minority) – two decades before its sister party in the United Kingdom was able to form government. It would win the most seats in 1906 (but not form government), and then form a majority government in 1910.

Labour’s unity as a party meant that the looser arrangement for other parties was not tenable. In order to both win elections and function inside the parliament there needed to be not only greater discipline, but a unified non-Labour force. Even if this non-Labour force comprised of different political philosophies and interests.

This led to a series of parties being formed that were able to win government, but would quickly collapse under the weight of their internal contradictions – the Commonwealth Liberal Party, the Nationalist Party, and the United Australia Party.

Towards the end of World War II, former United Australia Party prime minister Robert Menzies decided he needed to solve this problem of constant formation and collapse, and so in 1944 the Liberal Party was created. The party took the name “Liberal” as Menzies wanted it to be a forward-looking party, but it was effectively an amalgamation of both liberals (properly understood, not the American definition) and conservatives. For context, think if in the UK the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party (before it became the Liberal Democrats) had merged into a single party.

There was no guarantee that the party wouldn’t collapse like its predecessors, but global conditions were about to become heavily in its favour. The Cold War made liberalism – as authoritarianism’s ideological opposite – the set of ideas the West would rally around. To be conservative therefore meant conserving liberal democracy. This calculation created a broader purpose for conservatives that would keep the Liberal Party tied to liberal principles.

Of course, there were intense ideological battles within the party. The party leadership transferred back and forth between the liberal Andrew Peacock and conservative John Howard throughout the 1980s. But Howard’s successful capturing of the party in the 1990s coincided with the end of the Cold War, and without its broader purpose, the party’s stitched together alliance would start to fray. And those less committed to liberalism would start to yearn for something more agitated and emotionally thrilling. As has also happened in the Republican Party.⁵

The 2010s saw a replay of the Peacock vs Howard battles with Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott. Turnbull being the last great liberal hope. Although he managed to become prime minister for three years, it was three years of relentless hostility internally from his haters in the party and from the Murdoch press. His ouster in 2018 was the final nail in the “broad church” of the Liberal Party. And opened the door very wide for the Community Independents Project to stride in.

The seven urban seats that these independents won – one in 2019, and six in 2022 – are demographically the type of seats that are always won by the Liberal Party in Canada, and now the Liberal Democrats in the United Kingdom. Wealthy, highly educated, and holistically liberal⁶. They would hold their nose and vote for the Liberal Party as it became increasingly reactionary, because voting Labor would be a non-starter. But these independents have offered them a path away from the Liberal Party. Each of the seven urban MPs elected would be comfortable in a “Turnbullite” party, were one to exist.

Effectively this is a party split – although rather than splitting at the party level it has split at the voter level. With the voters stating “if the party is not going to split itself, then we’ll do it for you.” The Liberal Party had managed to do what its predecessors as a “non-Labor party” weren’t able to do and gain longevity. But the weight of its internal contradictions have eventually proved too great for it to withstand.

Six of the seven urban Community Independents will most likely retain their seats. One, Kylea Tink, won’t recontest, as there’s been a redistribution of seats around the country and New South Wales has lost a seat. The seat removed was her’s of North Sydney. However, some of North Sydney has gone into neighbouring Bradfield, where independent Nicolette Boele came a close second last election. It is likely that Boele will win the seat this election. With the weakening of the Coalition vote, seats like McPherson on the Gold Coast and Flinders on the outskirts of Melbourne might also be in play. This would open up new terrain and constituencies in peri-urban areas.

The gains that movement could make are also unpredictable due to Australia’s voting system. As if one of the Coalition parties’ primary vote in a seat – that is, the number of first preferences it receives – is pulled down towards 40 percent, then an independent only needs to have the second highest number of first preference (regardless of how many) and they will scoop up Labor and Green preferences to overtake the Coalition candidate.

The more chaos that emerges from the White House in the next two weeks the stronger the chances of this occurring – as the voters see the Coalition as too closely aligned to Trump.

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Post-Script

There is also a story to tell about independent candidates not connected to the Community Independents Project – and in particular about space opening up in previously safe Labor Party seats (building on Dai Le’s win last election in Fowler) – but this probably best for some post-election analysis when we see how the numbers fall. Le will hold her seat, however most likely Labor will hold its other traditional seats in the western suburbs of Sydney and Melbourne, but there will be shifts away from the party. Aside from Le these communities have yet to find candidates to consolidate their emerging suspicion of Labor around. And these seats have different conditions – like less time and money – to organise themselves the way the Community Independence Project has. But it should be acknowledged that the movement away from major parties in Australia is a multi-faceted force and not solely concentrated in the Community Independents Project.

1. Teals comes from the urban MPs being economically liberal (thus the blue of the Liberal Party) and making climate change a central policy (thus the green of the environmental movement). This makes a bit of sense, as you will read further in the article.

2. Calare is going to be a tight threeway contest between two independents and the National Party. The current sitting MP, Andrew Gee, was elected as a National, but quit the party over its opposition to the 2023 referendum on a new indigenous advisory body to the parliament. He’s running as an independent, but not connected to the Community Independents Project. Two other sitting MPs – Russell Broadbent and Ian Goodenough – quit the Liberal Party during this past term to sit as independents, and are also running in their seats again.

3. A quick explainer on “the Coalition”. This is a permanent coalition between four political parties – the Liberal Party, the National Party, the Liberal National Party of Queensland and the Country Liberal Party of the Northern Territory. But they effectively function as two parties in the parliament. Liberal National Party MPs can choose whether to sit with the Liberals or the Nationals, while, despite their name, the Country Liberals always sit with the Nationals. The Western Australian and South Australian National parties are not subject to the Coalition agreement, although any elected MPs are free to join if they choose.

4. The Labor Party changed their name to the American spelling in 1912. Although the party has never explained why. The best guess seems to be to put some distance between Labor the party and the labour movement more broadly. But in every other instance, the word would be spelt “labour” in Australia. I’m using Labour Party here because I’m incredibly pedantic as from 1901 - 1912 this was how the party spelt its name, so should be spelt this way when discussing this period.

5. Calling this “conservative” is a disservice, I think. But I’m trying to provide a broad understanding here rather than getting down into the ideological weeds (even though I personally love it in the ideological weeds). An essay I wrote for Quillette in 2020 called The Failure of Fusionism explains things better and in more depth.

6. Market-based economies, rule of law, limited government, freedom of speech, assembly and religion, a defence of human rights, striving towards equality of opportunity, and an adherence to the restraints of constitutionalism.