From the kitchen table to the crossbench
An interview with two behind-the-scenes stalwarts of the independents' movement, Denis Ginnivan and Lesley Howard
Denis Ginnivan and Lesley Howard both have deep roots in the community independents’ movement, reaching back to the Voices of Indi group that launched Cathy McGowan as the ground-zero candidate for this welcome disruption to the two-party system.1 What follows is an edited transcript of an interview I did with both of them last week.2 We touched on some of the most sensitive topics that arise as the movement tries to maintain momentum, including matters to do with media coverage and the role played by funding organisation, Climate 200.
It was quite the conversation!
Lesley and Denis3 are part of an organisation called the Voices For Australia Project and they work with community groups at the earliest stages of the journey along the path of community organisation, long before candidates emerge and the electoral process begins.4 As you will see, this early involvement is an important part of how they think about what the independents’ project represents.
Denis is actually Cathy McGowan’s brother-in-law and a founding participant at Voices of Indi. I’ve gotten to know him well over the last few years and to me, he represents something essential about the whole community independents’ process. Since 2019 he has travelled the country sharing his knowledge of what made Voices of Indi successful, generous with his time and encouragement.
“I've always lived and worked in rural Australia,” he says, “so I've always had this sharp sense of how well we are going out here with the sort of representation we have, the good-old-boy kind of National Party stuff, who say they will take care of everything.
“As I got older, I just realised this is rubbish.”
For Denis, the whole process is about personal connection and he has committed himself to meeting people where they live.
“There's that idea of Tony Windor's that the world is run by those who show up. You turn up, make a connection, and you have a better rapport. And that's what we're doing. And there's lots of elements to it…. travel, zoom meetings, resourcing networks, mentoring and taking people into your confidence.”
The truth is, he says, when the process begins, “people are often shitting themselves with trepidation.”
Lesley I know less well, but one minute in her company and you sense the deep intelligence. I already knew she had an Antony-Green-like grasp of electoral data, and I wasn’t surprised to learn she has a Masters of Applied Statistics, a skill set she brings to bear for the benefit of the fledgling community groups she and Denis spend their time working with.
“When groups are just starting out, we find some people are very numerically literate and familiar with the electoral website,” she tells me. “Some people see a number and go ballistic, and others go, yeah, yeah, I get it. So, it's about first finding out what literacy level is there.”
She says she begins by going over the basics with these nascent groups.
“I’ll say, for example, did you know that 50% of people in your electorate vote before election day? Did you know that the largest ‘booth’ in your electorate is actually the postal votes? So, that's going to be a very hard strategy for a non-incumbent.
“For people who aren’t comfortable working with numbers, I do bar graphs, very simple bar graphs so they can easily see that, for example, the pre-poll centre in, say, Wodonga is like this big and all the little valleys and mountains that Cathy went up and down are important, but these little electorate booths are only this big compared to that big.”
She points out that Cathy McGowan won in 2013 by a mere 439 votes and it therefore matters to know where the votes come from.
“Four-hundred and thirty-nine votes?” Denis chimes in. “She worked too hard.”
As I am talking with them, I start to feel I am asking the wrong questions. Or rather, that my questions are all framed around the idea of electoral success, and that for these guys—just as Cathy McGowan said to me when we spoke recently—it isn’t just about getting people elected.
"It's not all about getting your candidate elected"
[What is required is] cathedral thinking. We must lay the foundation while we may not know exactly how to build the ceiling.
“What we're doing is separate from the world of money, strategy and campaigning,” Denis says. “From political analysis. Where we've been all this time—in this timeline, or continuum—is right down there, in the fledgling, early days. With some candidates and groups, we've had continuous involvement, but broadly speaking, we tend to be pre-money, pre-gaming and pre-media. We’re more to do with what's going on locally.”
Finding a path between community engagement and the demands of politics
I am sure you all know that Simon Holmes à Court is founder of the Climate 200 funding organisation. Denis, Lesley and I talk about his presentation at the Press Club a couple of days earlier and I say I thought he was impressive but that I found one aspect of his address jarring. He spoke about Climate 200 playing the long game in terms of their involvement with community groups, but he also described the coming election as being a “sliding doors” moment.
Leslie had noticed it too.
My thought was, and is, that it is wrong to frame any given election as an either/or moment because, in fact, it is the long game that matters.
That is, even if at the next election some independents lose their seats, or Labor—against the odds—sneak back into majority government, that doesn’t mean the independents thing has failed or reached a hard ceiling. The trend away from the major parties is likely to continue, whatever the result of the next election.5
“It’s the wrong metaphor,” Denis agrees.
This exchange opened further discussion about the role of Climate 200 and other groups in the larger process of the community independents’ movement. It raised questions about the role of the media too, and certainly there is a recognition amongst people like Denis and Lesley that the media misrepresent Climate 200’s role.
Still, I have spoken with enough people since 2022 to know that there are very mixed feelings about the role Climate 200 plays. Many of those I’ve spoken with won’t even go on the record when I bring up Climate 200, but Lesley assures me she is fine being quoted.
“I really like Simon,” she says, “but I don't like the corporatisation and how Simon is always the go-to person. They (Climate 200) should have been more under the radar, and they should have allocated different spokespeople at different times.
“I don’t mean they should be more secretive—far from it—only that they could’ve done more to not make themselves the story.”
She says she thought Holmes à Court did an excellent job at the Press Club, that he had his messaging right, and that he explained compellingly that, compared to the funding available to the major parties, the amount of money Climate 200 provides to various independent campaigns is miniscule. She was impressed that he is wary of the “teal” label and that he now defaults to the use of “community independent”.
“This is a movement and it isn't something that's static. There's an evolution in all community structures and all organisational structures, and this is just another part, and it will survive or not depending on how people manage it.”
She was less impressed with a podcast interview between journalist Michelle Grattan and Tina Jackson, the co-founder of the Community Independents Project. Not only did Grattan use the “teal” descriptor carelessly, Jackson touched on other sore points that I know from experience are ongoing concerns within the broader independents’ project.
Lesley says that Grattan started with a sort of disclaimer, using the expression “so-called teals”, but after that “she defaults to teal. And Tina was talking community, and I thought, oh, Michelle, you've …missed all that community stuff.
“It was like, how do we get that in your head?”
I’m completely sympathetic to the point Lesley is making and agree completely that the “teal” name is misused by the media for reasons I have spelt out before. The bigger point is that this movement is all about the communities themselves, not about any outside help they get, including from people like Lesley and Denis. Both of them are very strong on the idea that community engagement is the priority, not electoral politics per se, a position they feel isn’t necessarily shared by other involved groups.
“Climate 200 is all about the candidate-to-MP process,” Lesley explains. “So, although they speak strongly about community, they're actually not limiting themselves to that.
“The Community Independents Project (CIP), too, is community oriented, but for the purpose of building momentum for a candidate and an MP. So it's all got the end point of a successful campaign. And one thing that did irk me a bit about that podcast with Tina Jackson was while she was very good at explaining a lot of terms and what they do, she actually said the Community Independents Project is the connector, the networker, that ‘we are the glue of the movement.’”
“I got a bit offended,” Lesley says.
“There's a lot of people doing stuff. Margo (Kingston) was doing stuff. You’re doing stuff. It takes away the autonomy of the groups as well. And it's actually the community that will make the decision.
“I guess what got up my nose a bit is about ownership of stuff. Tina Jackson said, in the podcast, we have however many candidates running. We have—not “there are”, but we have—35 communities that are fielding candidates. There's this ownership of process.”
Denis is similarly aggrieved.
“When people do that there's this sense of it's all been run by someone at head office who's talking about ‘we’,” he says. “To me, that's a direct disempowering of people locally, and there's consequences when people say that.”
It reminds me of a line from Tony Windsor quoted in a draft report about their work that Lesley and Denis shared with me before the interview. Windsor said back in 2018, “Be wary of the top hats taking over the community movement ...the most successful Independent campaigns are grassroots where each small donation brings with it a person willing to help and a team of equals.”
I ask them what he meant by that and they agree that he was talking about the risks involved in “big money” making its way into the process; any sort of corporatising tendency away from what should primarily be an organic, community project.
But Lesley makes the point that things will naturally evolve.
“This is a movement and it isn't something that's static. There's an evolution in all community structures and all organisational structures and this is just another part. It will survive or not depending on how people manage it.”
She says, “I think maybe Climate 200’s corporatisation has been a real negative, but they do seem to be evolving. Simon's speech on Wednesday was a clear evolution, really trying to define where he is and the misrepresentations that have been portrayed about them.”
As with so many associated with the community independents—and in my role as a chronicler of how the process has been developing, I would include myself in this—both Lesley and Denis are hugely frustrated with how the media report the independents and how this new force fits into Australian politics.
“The media needs to actually work with that,” Lesley says—meaning the evolution she sees happening at Climate 200—“and do some homework. They don't even get the details right. It's just lazy journalism.”
Denis returns to the importance of the work they do right at the beginning of the process, in getting the groups off the ground. He speaks with real admiration for those who take that first step, and he stresses again that, as far as he’s concerned, whether a candidate is found, let alone elected, is not the most important thing.
“I think, Tim, through this work, this project, we've been traveling much more with the early conveners and the early members of the fledgling groups,” he reminds me.
“And then it all moves. The caravan moves on from a democracy group and morphs into a candidate process.”
He says that some people move from those community groups into the campaign itself but that that move isn’t the measure of their worth.
“In my mind, what they did right at the beginning is the demonstrator of their worth and of their grit and determination to do something, despite not being 100% sure about what to do.”
Obviously, candidacy and election—and re-election—ultimately become significant factors, but I take Denis’s point. And for me, this deep-rooted community building aspect of the movement is the most misunderstood aspect of how the independents are reported. Whenever you hear the electoral success of 2022 described as being the result of a negative reaction against Scott Morrison—rather than as a positive choice for candidates that emerged organically through these processes—you know you are hearing from journalists and analysists who have probably never been anywhere near the communities themselves.
What do people still get wrong about the independents’ project?
To finish up, I asked Lesley and Denis what they thought was the biggest misconception people had about the movement, and I got typically thoughtful answers.
“The lead misconception,” Denis says, “is that this social and political movement is seen as—and is called by the media as—effectively a political party (teal), led from the top by Simon Holmes à Court, with money to support the campaigns which serve the funders’ policy agenda.
“Related to this is the subsequent misconception that the Voices groups are there to serve the funders’ agenda and priorities.”
In a follow-up email, he stresses that the truth is quite different.
“It is the people and community who have the power to initiate the social component of the movement by forming a constituted group and conducting an electorate-level engagement process to hear and understand what each community wants. And if then indicated, to initiate a process of finding the best local candidate to prosecute the political component of the movement most effectively, pursuing the specific
electorate’s local agenda and priorities.”
And there’s more, he says.
“Another misconception is that it is a political movement, thus anti-LNP. Apart from anything else, some groups organically develop in ALP-held seats, and this is increasingly occurring.
“Finally, there is the misconception that people who wish to get involved in community politics are only driven by the availability of money. But money is not the driver. It is personal motivation and commitment to help make our politics function more effectively. That is evident in The Indi Way book. The citizen and the community have the power...if only they use it!
“So, there is a change in the Australian psyche, when the possibilities for participation become evident and real.”
Lesley, too, refers me to The Indi Way book, specifically to a section in which one of the early players in the movement, Alana Johnson, talks about the idea of “the ladder”:
Undertaking this conceptual thinking proved critical to the long-term cohesion and stability of our group. We didn’t just rush ahead, excited by the outcomes we wanted to achieve, but gave adequate attention to both uprights of the ladder and each of the rungs to ensure that our process was robust. At this stage, what was crystal clear was that we were seeking to build a movement, not create an organisation that we defined and owned. We knew that if we got the right process for involving people in this movement, we would achieve the outcomes we sought.
“For me,” Lesley says, “‘the movement’ is like this ladder where engagement and activism run in parallel to collaborative political representation. Actions such as kitchen table conversations and campaigns are the rungs on the ladder, and values and process give it integrity.
“I remember sitting with Phil Haines and Denis on one of our democracy road trips. In between conversations with various Voices groups, we had been furiously editing The Indi Way draft as deadlines were looming. In one of our discussions, I proposed a small change to the title. A title had been agreed upon at the very beginning of V4i’s book-writing journey but, as with all things over time, conceptions and perceptions had evolved and a new title had recently emerged—The Indi Way: how a rural community sparked a political movement.
“Phil, ever polite (but with a strained look that said this three year-long collaborative process had taken its toll) asked for my thoughts.
“I suggested that the movement was more than political and proposed an addition, which was ultimately accepted. The Indi Way: how a rural community sparked a social and political movement.6
“So, for me the biggest misconception about this movement is defining it as only a political creature. In fact, the social and the political run in parallel and the defining aspect of it is the positivity and value-driven nature of it.”
The discussion with Lesley and Denis reinforced for me that, as important as the next election is—especially if it does return a minority government—the independents’ movement is about more than electoral success. It is about building the sort of community-level resilience that, I would argue, is the only thing that will keep us from sliding into the anti-democratic, authoritarian abyss so many other democracies are either already in or teetering on the edge of. And that means organising in as many communities as possible, particularly the ones the major parties still see as “safe” and continue to take for granted.
I’ll have more to say about all this as we work our way towards, and through, the next election.
Please note: I covered some other really interesting matters with Denis and Lesley, matters that I thought could stand alone, and I will write those up in forthcoming articles.
When I say this disruption is “welcome”, I mean, to my way of thinking.
As well as some text from a follow-up email.
I’m going to use their first names. I think we can handle the informality.
There is a third Musketeer of the Voices for Australia Project, and that is Phil Haines.
Just adding that I think the election tide has really turned in the last few weeks, and Dutton’s aping of Trump positions is really worrying people. I think this might be like 1993, where people hold their nose and vote Labor in bigger numbers than we might’ve expected at the start of the year.
Please note: after some consultation with others involved, Lesley asked that I publish this clarification about the book-title story.
Rereading the above I realised it was a very abbreviated version of the many discussions by many people that were had and lends itself to an interpretation that I was the only or the original person to have the view that the Indi story was about a social movement as well as a political movement. This was certainly not the case. The story and the title are a collective effort to record a community’s story.
As the book neared completion there were many conversations about the various themes brought out in the Indi story. I was particularly taken with a bushfire metaphor put forward to describe what had happened in Indi and beyond, where sparks from a fire can travel and ignite other fires, but we can’t always predict or control that spread. It made me think about how this story was so much more than simply one about politics but was deeply grounded in the society and community as well.
As mentioned, a title had been agreed upon at the very beginning of V4i’s book-writing journey but over time a new title emerged, one that embodied the idea that this movement was multi-faceted and organic in its spread - The Indi Way: how a rural community sparked a social and political movement.
As a Greens member I hope that we can all work together in order to avoid ever seeing this beautiful country taken over by the mafia who will always find weak spots and take over the joint .Dutton may be a boof head but there is a brain worm implanted and firing off amongst the compost 🤯🎩
Tim I could not agree more with your comment about the need for "community level resilience" being "...the only thing that will keep us from sliding into the anti-democratic, authoritarian abyss...". Great interview and write up, thanks.