There are two questions I am asked most days.
The first, “Are you going to run again?”, is often followed by “Please run again!”
And the second, “When are the independents going to form a party?”, is often followed by “Please form a party!”
Neither question has an easy answer, although the first may be clearer cut than the second.
Speaking at a writers’ festival recently, I took a straw poll among the audience on the issue.
I asked several hundred people in the room to raise their hands if they like the work of the independents in the parliament. About 80% did so. I then asked if they would like the independents to have more influence. A similar number raised their hands. Finally, I asked who thought the independents should form a party. Less than half a dozen agreed.
Those in the room could see the value in what the independents do and want them to expand their impact, but they don’t want them to lose their independence.
In the fluid political environment of today, the temptation, and arguably the need, to fill a gap in the landscape informed by genuine listening to and engagement with communities filled with disappointment and rage is obvious.
The delicate question for the independents is whether doing so within a party structure will fracture the community independents movement.
It’s a conundrum. But perhaps the best approach is to have an open mind.
In the past few years, independents have driven change to integrity and corruption oversight, climate policy, tax policy, social media policy, student debt settings, single parent payments, family law and more.
Helen Haines did not need to hold the balance of power to force the major parties to stand up the National Anti-Corruption Commission. Zali Steggall did not need to hold the balance of power to force climate change on to the agenda.
Previously, Peter Andren and Ted Mack did not have the balance of power when they teamed up with maverick Liberal Alby Schultz to halt the privatisation of Snowy Hydro Limited.
And a new, values-aligned party enabling the addition of independent senators, and extra members in the lower house, would strengthen, not weaken, the centrist bloc.
If the remnants of the Libs and Nats join with One Nation to survive, such a party could help provide a buffer between that rightwing coalition and Labor.
I don’t see why such a party – required by our electoral system to run above the line in the Senate if independents are to be competitive, as David Pocock has done in the ACT – can’t happily coexist with those independents who choose not to join.
While many in the media and political classes – both of which have a vested interest in the existing political framework – are indignant at the prospect of some independents forming a party, the fact that others have expressly ruled themselves out of joining does not represent a “split” in the movement.
It expressly disproves what opponents of the independents have argued all along.
It proves that independents are just that – independent.
They make decisions based on the views, needs and priorities of their particular communities, weighed within the broader national context and underpinned by their clearly declared pillars and values.
Some will conclude that their communities support an alliance of sorts. Others won’t.
Senator Jane Hume’s comments reflect the Liberal party’s total lack of imagination.
“The idea that they have gone out there and said to their electorates that they are ‘community independents’ that ‘we’re going to do politics differently’ but have now demonstrated they’re going to do it exactly the same way, I think speaks volumes,” she told Sky News.
Who says anyone plans to “do it exactly the same way”?
There is no law that members of parties have to vote as a bloc, use traditional preselection or leadership structures, or anything else. These are merely protocols used by legacy parties.
A new party could choose to do it differently. It’s called innovation.
There’s also the fact that electoral finance structures favour the major parties exponentially.
Donation laws stitched up by the major parties during the last parliament compound this, and may, in effect, force every independent to form an individual “party” to compete. (Unless Rex Patrick and I succeed in getting the laws knocked out in the case I have taken to the high court.)
Wedging the independents was a bonus for the major parties when they colluded to tilt the playing field to save themselves as voters drift away.
But I doubt any independents would form the kind of party that the two major parties would recognise. Structure, portfolio and policy approach, conscience voting – all are up for debate.
The major parties are still the problem, and with some creativity the independents can reorganise to better work together when they have common ground, while retaining the very thing that made them attractive in the first place.
And the media needs to open its mind too.
Whether we are in a moment of evolution or revolution is a matter for our communities who continue to seek true good-faith representation.
I have no doubt that independents – whether they do or don’t join a party – can and will continue to deliver that.
As to my own decisions, well, my community would need to back me to run first.
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Zoe Daniel is a three-time ABC foreign correspondent and the former independent member for Goldstein
