Bravo TD, your views mirror my utter, utter contempt for the 2party duopoly system (though my contempt comes with many more 'f' expletives especially when I see the usual substandard ABC/ MSM coverage of the election campaign). It's the galling way that the people at the top of these giant pyramid selling scam/cults treat ordinary people with total disdain and how this extends to their support mechanisms - the enthralled MSM, the big corporate donors, faceless party king makers/breakers & faction leaders. How anybody sincerely interested in doing what's best for a nation could join the duopoly & become a career politican is beyond comprehension for me. If anyone know of some good accounts of career politicians who've gone down that path & now regret their decision (TD mentions a few above) please let me know.
Agree completely Gavin. Barry Jones wrote eloquently about this in the Saturday Paper a month or so ago. But he was one of the original Participants (who became the "Independents") in the Victorian ALP. People like him, Button and Cain. They were actually capable of independent thought and wanted to make the world a better place. Huh!
Looking at the latest opinion polls, it is becoming even more apparent the way in which Dutton's "success" has been an invention of sections of the media. It is also, therefore, a indication of their lack of influence.
Absolutely spot on Tim.The arrogance of Labor and undermining the Greens as if for some reason we rely on them!
As a member for years I have watched the two parties enjoy the Murdoch Nazis come into play to have people hating us as dirty ferals but also…doctors wives and Chardonnay sippers Somewhere we have got there as Media are written off as liars and propagandists .
It is strange that the old parties don't realise that their inaction and collusions have contributed to the emergence of independents. It's bizarre that they choose to bag independents rather than look inward to see how they could change 'structures'(?), be more appealing to a wider membership and enable that membership to make suggestions which could be taken on board rather than sending them to Siberia for saying something which goes against tradition.
How does this government make change, anyway? For some reason, Albanese, during the last election campaign, promised that he would go ahead with the LNP devised Stage 3 tax cuts which
would have made the obscenely wealthy, more grotesquely so. So many people protested against this - to their local MPs and higher up. But at what point do you get a rethink? Two million emails expressing disapproval? Less than that? ~ Nah.
I am really jaded. While I find politics interesting, it feels like an election campaign has been happening since towards the end of last year. But since the election date is decided at whim, there's always a cloud of speculation as to when it will happen. And it's the blah of the older parties which gets reported.
The whole reason for being, all their power and prestige, and membership of various "clubs" depends on them not acknowledging the change. Change will only be forced on them when an old generation clears out and new one smells the coffee.
I really object to the blind, idiotic tribalism. I am sure there are people in the majors trying to work out how to institute first past the post voting in Australia to quell these upstarts.
I find it impossible to understand why Trump has so much support from the Liberals. How can they read newspaper articles that quantify the numerous verified lies that Trump told in his first term and still cheer for him to gain the presidency? And hasn't that worked well?
It is such a black and white attitude. Back the Republicans and hate the 'left wing' Democrats when Democratic economic policy is right wing with the edges smoothed.
In an Australian perspective, today if you suggested the tax rates of say the Fraser government, you would be called a socialist. The socialist treasurer at the time, John Howard, would possibly disagree.
I've crossed paths with a few Labor supporters on Facebook who spend almost all their time attacking the Greens. I keep saying the enemy is to the right but their blind tribalism sees the Greens as a threat. I tell them their ridiculous claims are as bad as the bullshit that the Liberals say about Labor, who are also centre right economically. Nothing cuts through. Blind, idiotic tribalism.
I agree Graeme. I fell into an argument with an old friend recently. He's a Labor loyalist and the worst thing he could say about me when I said Labor hadn't done enough on housing was, "Brendan, you're sounding like a member of the Greens!" What a devastating insult.
Been meaning to write something on how tribalism is the proximate cause of all our problems, the idea that the team is more important that society. We don't talk about it enough and it obviously goes with what I am saying here. Stay tuned!
Beautifully said, again Tim. I'm so glad we cancelled our Age subscription. They write about Labor punishing the Greens "...for its stance on the war in Gaza..." Or, in the truthful language used by human beings, "...for opposing the genocide of the Palestinian people..." It will be a good day when the editors of the Age are in the dock for enabling genocide.
I'm not convinced that Independents will gain many more seats in this election—though if the Liberal vote continues to decline, it's possible. That said, I do think there will still be strong support for one of the main factors behind their rise, which you highlight in your piece: their commitment to putting people before parties.
The Greens could have taken a different approach to the centralised, tightly-controlled, top-down style of decision-making and enforcing of discipline of the other large parties. It's disappointing that they didn't exlpore this approach of 'doing politics differently'.
I suspect this is one reason why, when voters have had the chance to vote for a solid independent in areas with a strong core Greens vote, that vote has often bled to the Independent - like Fremantle in the recent WA election, or Kooyong federally, or perhaps Noosa in Queensland which was a 'safe' Liberal seat that went Independent in 2017 but previously had a Greens vote strong enough that they were seriously considering targetting it as winnable around that time.
This is interesting to me because I don't really have a developed idea of how the Greens actually fit into all this. A party, obviously, but my impression is that they are much more attuned to human contact with voters and that in fact, the Qld result of 2022 Federal election was on the back of well-organised door-knocking campaign. A different but cognate version of the Voices Of appraoch
Whether the number of independents increases greatly, or at all, after May3 is still very much up for grabs imo. Unknowable given the difficulties they still face and their basic newness. My main point is always that the trend is away from the majors and that that will continue regardless of any given election result.
Tend to agree that the Greens are missing an opportunity and need to present themselves better outside the inner suburbs in particular.
Human contact is just the first step. It's what you do with that contact - even more so if you happen to get elected. The Greens obviously didn't invent doorknocking, but have had the advanatage of being able to concentrate it in a few areas, rather than have to spread it across a large number of targeted seats/regions. This similarly makes it easier to target a sharper message (& image) that works in specific areas, but doesn't necessarily translate elsewhere - which is what the larger parties have to do (& are increasingly struglling to succeed at, for a bunch of reasons, including those yu wrote about.)
Regardless of all that, if the human contact just becomes the equivalent of a sales/marketing job with accompanying data harvesting, and supporters are mostly used as a churn and burn semi-renewable resource with no agency or input of their own - which is the standard approach of Ausraian political parties - compared to a genuine act of listening to commuity concerns, and then working on and with those commuities about those concerns including giving them agency into how those issues are best addressed & being prepared to modify your own approach as part of that, then nothing meaningful will change with how politics operates.
When push to comes to shove - which happens in bigs ways only occasionally, but is very telling when it does - the straightjacket of party discpline & the party's doctrine-of-the-day (which is inevitably driven mostly by the self-interest of the party) almost always wins out ahead of the interests of the community.
My sense is that this is the key difference that genuine indpendents can highlight, although I think most have a fair way to go when it comes to genuine particpatory engagement with the electorates.
We'll see if/how the Independents evolve in regards to all this. It's not always easy to tell when one is a fair distance from that community, as it's too local scale for today's media to be able to grasp or focus on, but it seems reasonable to assume that this somewhat reflects at least the McGowan/Haines approach in Indi. The unique achievement there of one genuine indpendent effectively handing over to another genuine independet is - as far as I know - unique in federal political history, and hasn't got as much attetion as I think it merits, and could only occur if it's the model that appeals to the electorate as much as the individual incumbent.
Agree about McGowan/Haines handover and gave it some attention in the last book. Quoted McGowan basically bearing out your point, "The people in our community had made a decision that they didn’t want to hand back their power to a political party. They wanted something bigger and better: to be directly involved in how their local member would represent them in the federal parliament."
My bigger concern in all this is that, esp once you are in a minority govt, you aren't just representing your community but the whole country. This is actually the real challenge to the two-party system because it moves towards reestablishing the floor of parliament as the decision-making space, a role that was usurped by "major" parties between 1904-10. Centralising power in their executives outside the parliament. I don't think the independents have really got their heads around this and I'm damn sure the major parties will resist it.
True - whether it could scale up if/when they all get put into this sort of situation is a key question. I think it could be done in theory, but I'm somewhat sceptical that it could do so successfully - partly because our general view of politics isn't mature enough to cope with that degree of so-called 'uncertainty'.
(in fact putting a bunch of Independents in that position might be a good tactic for the bigger parties to consider when they are looking at ways to derail that movement - there's nothing like being directly responsible for decisions yourself to test stress how well all your rhetoric holds up in reality (as the Greens when part of the Tassie state govt & to a lesser extent the Democrats discovered (albeit the Dems were never part of a government).
Yeah, as I say, I think the indies need a governing framework so they are prepared for that sort of tactic and I don't think they're anywhere near it. It has to be part of the ask in any negotiation over support for minority govt--the only moment they will have some leverage--and it is needs to be about structural reform. Just by-the-by, some of the new indies vying for election this time are a bit more gung-ho in this respect, I suspect, and that will be interesting (Nicolette Boele, for instance).
“Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are speaking to?” - Tim, he’s speaking to the media houses who are owned and operated by vested interests because he’s terrified of being attacked. Most of his decisions are about avoiding being wedged or attacked. He’s exactly what you call out initially, lifer politician who no longer knows how to function on behalf of the community. Desperate to hold onto power for the sake of it. We deserve better.
I think it’s within the bones of both parties. It’s become part of the rules of operations. Can’t do anything that will upset Murdoch et al because they still carry the scars from dust ups 20 years ago. I think the mining super tax loss also drives a lot of his decisions. That was a lived experience for him and he was dead in the middle of the party being torn apart at the time. He’s absolutely one of those politicians who got in it for the right reasons but no longer even knows what they are. I like your thinking about independents working almost on a temporary basis (2-3 terms) delivering and then returning back to the community. Reminds me of an essay in the monthly from a few years ago that I still refer back to https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/february/1422709200/tim-flannery-and-catriona-wallace/fixing-politics (looking this up it was a decade ago!!!)
Absolutely brilliant piece, Tim; like watching someone finally name the stench in a long-rotting room.
You’ve sketched the dead-eyed pageantry of our electoral theatre with scalpel precision. Labor and the Libs aren’t parties anymore; they’re legacy software: buggy, bloated, and crashing mid-update while insisting they’re "listening to everyday Australians." Albanese, that weary administrator of managed decline, thinks refusing to work with the Greens is some Churchillian flex, not just a tantrum from a man whose party hasn’t cracked 40 per cent since Kevin07.
The Liberals, meanwhile, have embraced full culture war cosplay, barely bothering to conceal their contempt for democracy, let alone basic governance. Yet the press gallery continues to act like this is all normal; just two “viable” options, playing the great Australian two-party symphony on a piano missing half the keys.
You’re right: the audience has moved on. We just haven’t burnt the stage yet.
The independents are rising not because people are confused but because they finally see clearly. Loyalty to a party that treats you as a demographic slice and nothing more? No thanks. This isn’t protest, it’s escape.
Let the whole decrepit edifice crumble. And then let’s build something worth voting for. As I said elsewhere, it isn’t the lesser of two evils. It’s the evil of two lessers.
Not sure the US Democratic Party was ever really attached to the working class. They were fellow travellers for a time but the Congressional Party was always willing to throw the working class to the wolves except during the period of the New Deal. TBH in my mind the Democrats always seemed closer to the Wets of the Australian Liberal Party or the British Liberal Party than the British Labour apartheid or the Australian Labor Party.
I think that's right, it has never been a party of labour in that sense. Still, I think it is fair to say that organised labour has been amongst the coalitions they have built over the years and that connection has grown weaker more recently. In part, because organised US labour itself barely exists anymore. But point well taken.
Bravo TD, your views mirror my utter, utter contempt for the 2party duopoly system (though my contempt comes with many more 'f' expletives especially when I see the usual substandard ABC/ MSM coverage of the election campaign). It's the galling way that the people at the top of these giant pyramid selling scam/cults treat ordinary people with total disdain and how this extends to their support mechanisms - the enthralled MSM, the big corporate donors, faceless party king makers/breakers & faction leaders. How anybody sincerely interested in doing what's best for a nation could join the duopoly & become a career politican is beyond comprehension for me. If anyone know of some good accounts of career politicians who've gone down that path & now regret their decision (TD mentions a few above) please let me know.
Agree completely Gavin. Barry Jones wrote eloquently about this in the Saturday Paper a month or so ago. But he was one of the original Participants (who became the "Independents") in the Victorian ALP. People like him, Button and Cain. They were actually capable of independent thought and wanted to make the world a better place. Huh!
Looking at the latest opinion polls, it is becoming even more apparent the way in which Dutton's "success" has been an invention of sections of the media. It is also, therefore, a indication of their lack of influence.
Absolutely spot on Tim.The arrogance of Labor and undermining the Greens as if for some reason we rely on them!
As a member for years I have watched the two parties enjoy the Murdoch Nazis come into play to have people hating us as dirty ferals but also…doctors wives and Chardonnay sippers Somewhere we have got there as Media are written off as liars and propagandists .
If Labor get back over the line, this will be final confirmation of just how unimportant the "mainstream media" are.
It is strange that the old parties don't realise that their inaction and collusions have contributed to the emergence of independents. It's bizarre that they choose to bag independents rather than look inward to see how they could change 'structures'(?), be more appealing to a wider membership and enable that membership to make suggestions which could be taken on board rather than sending them to Siberia for saying something which goes against tradition.
How does this government make change, anyway? For some reason, Albanese, during the last election campaign, promised that he would go ahead with the LNP devised Stage 3 tax cuts which
would have made the obscenely wealthy, more grotesquely so. So many people protested against this - to their local MPs and higher up. But at what point do you get a rethink? Two million emails expressing disapproval? Less than that? ~ Nah.
I am really jaded. While I find politics interesting, it feels like an election campaign has been happening since towards the end of last year. But since the election date is decided at whim, there's always a cloud of speculation as to when it will happen. And it's the blah of the older parties which gets reported.
The whole reason for being, all their power and prestige, and membership of various "clubs" depends on them not acknowledging the change. Change will only be forced on them when an old generation clears out and new one smells the coffee.
I really object to the blind, idiotic tribalism. I am sure there are people in the majors trying to work out how to institute first past the post voting in Australia to quell these upstarts.
I find it impossible to understand why Trump has so much support from the Liberals. How can they read newspaper articles that quantify the numerous verified lies that Trump told in his first term and still cheer for him to gain the presidency? And hasn't that worked well?
It is such a black and white attitude. Back the Republicans and hate the 'left wing' Democrats when Democratic economic policy is right wing with the edges smoothed.
In an Australian perspective, today if you suggested the tax rates of say the Fraser government, you would be called a socialist. The socialist treasurer at the time, John Howard, would possibly disagree.
I've crossed paths with a few Labor supporters on Facebook who spend almost all their time attacking the Greens. I keep saying the enemy is to the right but their blind tribalism sees the Greens as a threat. I tell them their ridiculous claims are as bad as the bullshit that the Liberals say about Labor, who are also centre right economically. Nothing cuts through. Blind, idiotic tribalism.
I agree Graeme. I fell into an argument with an old friend recently. He's a Labor loyalist and the worst thing he could say about me when I said Labor hadn't done enough on housing was, "Brendan, you're sounding like a member of the Greens!" What a devastating insult.
That's funny, but totally relatable!
Been meaning to write something on how tribalism is the proximate cause of all our problems, the idea that the team is more important that society. We don't talk about it enough and it obviously goes with what I am saying here. Stay tuned!
Beautifully said, again Tim. I'm so glad we cancelled our Age subscription. They write about Labor punishing the Greens "...for its stance on the war in Gaza..." Or, in the truthful language used by human beings, "...for opposing the genocide of the Palestinian people..." It will be a good day when the editors of the Age are in the dock for enabling genocide.
Exactly right and what I meant by them "playing along".
I'm not convinced that Independents will gain many more seats in this election—though if the Liberal vote continues to decline, it's possible. That said, I do think there will still be strong support for one of the main factors behind their rise, which you highlight in your piece: their commitment to putting people before parties.
The Greens could have taken a different approach to the centralised, tightly-controlled, top-down style of decision-making and enforcing of discipline of the other large parties. It's disappointing that they didn't exlpore this approach of 'doing politics differently'.
I suspect this is one reason why, when voters have had the chance to vote for a solid independent in areas with a strong core Greens vote, that vote has often bled to the Independent - like Fremantle in the recent WA election, or Kooyong federally, or perhaps Noosa in Queensland which was a 'safe' Liberal seat that went Independent in 2017 but previously had a Greens vote strong enough that they were seriously considering targetting it as winnable around that time.
This is interesting to me because I don't really have a developed idea of how the Greens actually fit into all this. A party, obviously, but my impression is that they are much more attuned to human contact with voters and that in fact, the Qld result of 2022 Federal election was on the back of well-organised door-knocking campaign. A different but cognate version of the Voices Of appraoch
Whether the number of independents increases greatly, or at all, after May3 is still very much up for grabs imo. Unknowable given the difficulties they still face and their basic newness. My main point is always that the trend is away from the majors and that that will continue regardless of any given election result.
Tend to agree that the Greens are missing an opportunity and need to present themselves better outside the inner suburbs in particular.
Human contact is just the first step. It's what you do with that contact - even more so if you happen to get elected. The Greens obviously didn't invent doorknocking, but have had the advanatage of being able to concentrate it in a few areas, rather than have to spread it across a large number of targeted seats/regions. This similarly makes it easier to target a sharper message (& image) that works in specific areas, but doesn't necessarily translate elsewhere - which is what the larger parties have to do (& are increasingly struglling to succeed at, for a bunch of reasons, including those yu wrote about.)
Regardless of all that, if the human contact just becomes the equivalent of a sales/marketing job with accompanying data harvesting, and supporters are mostly used as a churn and burn semi-renewable resource with no agency or input of their own - which is the standard approach of Ausraian political parties - compared to a genuine act of listening to commuity concerns, and then working on and with those commuities about those concerns including giving them agency into how those issues are best addressed & being prepared to modify your own approach as part of that, then nothing meaningful will change with how politics operates.
When push to comes to shove - which happens in bigs ways only occasionally, but is very telling when it does - the straightjacket of party discpline & the party's doctrine-of-the-day (which is inevitably driven mostly by the self-interest of the party) almost always wins out ahead of the interests of the community.
My sense is that this is the key difference that genuine indpendents can highlight, although I think most have a fair way to go when it comes to genuine particpatory engagement with the electorates.
We'll see if/how the Independents evolve in regards to all this. It's not always easy to tell when one is a fair distance from that community, as it's too local scale for today's media to be able to grasp or focus on, but it seems reasonable to assume that this somewhat reflects at least the McGowan/Haines approach in Indi. The unique achievement there of one genuine indpendent effectively handing over to another genuine independet is - as far as I know - unique in federal political history, and hasn't got as much attetion as I think it merits, and could only occur if it's the model that appeals to the electorate as much as the individual incumbent.
Agree about McGowan/Haines handover and gave it some attention in the last book. Quoted McGowan basically bearing out your point, "The people in our community had made a decision that they didn’t want to hand back their power to a political party. They wanted something bigger and better: to be directly involved in how their local member would represent them in the federal parliament."
My bigger concern in all this is that, esp once you are in a minority govt, you aren't just representing your community but the whole country. This is actually the real challenge to the two-party system because it moves towards reestablishing the floor of parliament as the decision-making space, a role that was usurped by "major" parties between 1904-10. Centralising power in their executives outside the parliament. I don't think the independents have really got their heads around this and I'm damn sure the major parties will resist it.
True - whether it could scale up if/when they all get put into this sort of situation is a key question. I think it could be done in theory, but I'm somewhat sceptical that it could do so successfully - partly because our general view of politics isn't mature enough to cope with that degree of so-called 'uncertainty'.
(in fact putting a bunch of Independents in that position might be a good tactic for the bigger parties to consider when they are looking at ways to derail that movement - there's nothing like being directly responsible for decisions yourself to test stress how well all your rhetoric holds up in reality (as the Greens when part of the Tassie state govt & to a lesser extent the Democrats discovered (albeit the Dems were never part of a government).
Also, I should read your last book.
Yeah, as I say, I think the indies need a governing framework so they are prepared for that sort of tactic and I don't think they're anywhere near it. It has to be part of the ask in any negotiation over support for minority govt--the only moment they will have some leverage--and it is needs to be about structural reform. Just by-the-by, some of the new indies vying for election this time are a bit more gung-ho in this respect, I suspect, and that will be interesting (Nicolette Boele, for instance).
“Who do you think you are? Who do you think you are speaking to?” - Tim, he’s speaking to the media houses who are owned and operated by vested interests because he’s terrified of being attacked. Most of his decisions are about avoiding being wedged or attacked. He’s exactly what you call out initially, lifer politician who no longer knows how to function on behalf of the community. Desperate to hold onto power for the sake of it. We deserve better.
Hear, hear, Kimber. He may be the last person in country who pays any attention to News Corp. So weird…
I think it’s within the bones of both parties. It’s become part of the rules of operations. Can’t do anything that will upset Murdoch et al because they still carry the scars from dust ups 20 years ago. I think the mining super tax loss also drives a lot of his decisions. That was a lived experience for him and he was dead in the middle of the party being torn apart at the time. He’s absolutely one of those politicians who got in it for the right reasons but no longer even knows what they are. I like your thinking about independents working almost on a temporary basis (2-3 terms) delivering and then returning back to the community. Reminds me of an essay in the monthly from a few years ago that I still refer back to https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2015/february/1422709200/tim-flannery-and-catriona-wallace/fixing-politics (looking this up it was a decade ago!!!)
Hadn't seen that article, but will have a read, thanks.
Let me know what you think!
Absolutely brilliant piece, Tim; like watching someone finally name the stench in a long-rotting room.
You’ve sketched the dead-eyed pageantry of our electoral theatre with scalpel precision. Labor and the Libs aren’t parties anymore; they’re legacy software: buggy, bloated, and crashing mid-update while insisting they’re "listening to everyday Australians." Albanese, that weary administrator of managed decline, thinks refusing to work with the Greens is some Churchillian flex, not just a tantrum from a man whose party hasn’t cracked 40 per cent since Kevin07.
The Liberals, meanwhile, have embraced full culture war cosplay, barely bothering to conceal their contempt for democracy, let alone basic governance. Yet the press gallery continues to act like this is all normal; just two “viable” options, playing the great Australian two-party symphony on a piano missing half the keys.
You’re right: the audience has moved on. We just haven’t burnt the stage yet.
The independents are rising not because people are confused but because they finally see clearly. Loyalty to a party that treats you as a demographic slice and nothing more? No thanks. This isn’t protest, it’s escape.
Let the whole decrepit edifice crumble. And then let’s build something worth voting for. As I said elsewhere, it isn’t the lesser of two evils. It’s the evil of two lessers.
Yours in hopeful demolition.
Not sure the US Democratic Party was ever really attached to the working class. They were fellow travellers for a time but the Congressional Party was always willing to throw the working class to the wolves except during the period of the New Deal. TBH in my mind the Democrats always seemed closer to the Wets of the Australian Liberal Party or the British Liberal Party than the British Labour apartheid or the Australian Labor Party.
I think that's right, it has never been a party of labour in that sense. Still, I think it is fair to say that organised labour has been amongst the coalitions they have built over the years and that connection has grown weaker more recently. In part, because organised US labour itself barely exists anymore. But point well taken.
Excellent on all points!