Whither the independents?

Three years ago, the fall of the major party vote was the most striking feature of Australia’s election. On that occasion Labor and the Coalition won just 68.3% of the vote between them, that number having, as I pointed out, “fallen 17 points in 15 years.” (All figures are for the House of Representatives; we’ll get to the Senate next week.)

In a limited sort of way, last Saturday’s result is good news for the major parties. That precipitous decline has mostly halted: on the latest figures (which shouldn’t change much), the major party total is down to 67.0%, still holding – just – above the psychological two-thirds mark. But the trend is still downward, and there’s no sign of the sort of change in approach that might reverse it.

Like last time, the beneficiaries are a mixed bag. The Greens, as we noted yesterday, have mostly held their vote, currently on 11.7%. An assortment of other left-of-centre parties, of which Legalise Cannabis is the largest, have another 1.8% between them. The mainstream neo-fascist party, One Nation, has 6.3% (up 1.3% on its 2022 result), while six other far-right parties bring in another 5.1%. Nearly all of the rest, 7.5% (up 2.2%), went to independents.

While the Greens and the far right are treated badly by the electoral system, winning just one seat each, the independents have a much better shot, concentrating their vote in specific places. Last time they won 11 seats (I’m counting Rebecca Sharkie, who technically has her own party, Centre Alliance), but one of them was abolished in the redistribution so they were defending ten – and hoping to win more.

It’s not yet clear if they have succeeded. One sitting independent (Zoe Daniel in Goldstein) has been defeated, and one new one has been elected (Andrew Gee in Calare, who was formerly in the National Party). The others all appear to have been returned, although there is an element of doubt about Monique Ryan in Kooyong (disclosure: on whose campaign I worked), and another half-dozen aspirants are still in with some chance, although the only one who looks at all likely is Jessie Price in Bean.

So despite the rise in the non-major-party vote, the crossbench will almost certainly be smaller, probably with 12 or 13 seats. And with a big Labor majority they will be less powerful in any case. Nonetheless, they have demonstrated that the 2022 result was no flash in the pan.

Before the election, Kevin Bonham valiantly attempted a classification of the independents. With two exceptions (Gee and Dai Le (Fowler)), the successful or possibly-successful ones are all in one of two categories: Teal/Community/Climate 200 or Apparently Teal/Green-Adjacent. There are some obvious differences among them but also strong common themes, so I’m going to refer to them as a single group and for want of a better word call them all Teals, with the caveat that only about half of them were actually branded in teal.

So with probably eight or nine MPs (plus a senator, the ACT’s David Pocock) the Teals are a significant force. Now they have to decide where they go from here. Fundamentally their dilemma has not changed since last time, when I put it like this:

The teals also will have some soul-searching to do. Independents, once established, are very hard to beat; as individuals, most of them have a good chance of retaining their seats for as long as they want them. But they will have to decide whether to be content with that, or whether they are serious about changing the country’s politics in a more lasting fashion.

If so, they will need to form a party or something like one; something that can compete with the Liberal Party on a broad front and possibly serve as a catalyst for splitting off its more moderate members.

The need to adapt, however, is now more urgent, with the collapse of the Liberals having opened up a bigger potential space for them, and Labor having legislated to remove any financial advantage from independent campaigns. Becoming a real party makes obvious sense, but it’s a difficult move for people whose independence is their trademark.

Although the Teals are now competing with Labor as well, their main adversary is the Liberals, to whom they pose an existential threat – as well as a reminder, to any Liberals left with a functioning conscience, of what they might have been. As a result much of the Liberal Party now regards them with a visceral hatred, greater than anything they reserve for Labor and much more like the attitude that sections of the Labor Party adopt (with even less excuse) towards the Greens.

Once upon a time, that liberal-centrist middle-class territory that the Teals have colonised seemed to be what the Greens were aiming at, but if that was a real opportunity it has now well and truly passed. Perhaps the most worrying results for the Greens were not the seats they narrowly lost, but the ones where they were not even in the hunt: most obviously Bean, which the Teals are now within a whisker of taking from Labor.

Ten years ago it would have been a natural Green target, but the Teals are now occupying that space. And if they do succeed in working like a party, their obvious next goal will be the Senate, where the Greens have much more to lose.