Voices of Us: The independents’ movement transforming Australian democracy

Voices

of us

TIM DUNLOP is a writer who lives in Naarm (Melbourne). He is a sought-after panellist and public speaker in Australia and overseas, and has written extensively on grassroots democracy and the role of the media, as well as technology and the future of work. He runs an active Twitter feed as @timdunlop, and his popular newsletter The Future of Everything (on Substack) is available for subscription. Voices of us is his fourth book.

‘Save the world, save our democracy: this book shows how maybe we can do both.’ JONATHAN GREEN

‘Tim Dunlop puts the rise of the Community Independents in its historical place – not a flash in the plan, neither the beginning nor the end of a process, but a crucial step in our democracy. This is an important and easy read for anyone wishing to understand more about how we can reclaim and reshape our politics.’ TIM HOLLO

‘Tim Dunlop provides a compelling examination of the long- term trends that led to the wave of independents being elected in the 2022 election. Rather than just treat the election in isolation, Voices of us shows how we got here, what it means, and crucially, highlights the powerful forces in politics and the media that will continue to try to reverse the tide.’ GREG JERICHO

‘The rise of the Voices Of movement has shaken the two-party system in Australia to its foundations, laying the basis for a fundamental realignment in the near future. But most of us know little about the history of the movement or about the theory of politics behind it. Tim Dunlop provides us with both an inside account of the way the movement developed, and an insightful analysis of the challenge it poses to Australia’s political class.’ JOHN QUIGGIN

‘A thoughtful, provocative and historically informed analysis of the rise of the independents in the 2019 federal election. Tim Dunlop charts how we arrived at this moment, the institutional failures (and some strengths) in media, political parties and in our sense of citizenship, and the possible ways forward from here, including reconceived democratic forms. This will be an influential book.’ MARGARET SIMONS

Voices

of us

The independents’ movement

transforming Australian democracy

Tim Dunlop

For Sally and John

A NewSouth book

Published by

NewSouth Publishing

University of New South Wales Press Ltd

University of New South Wales

Sydney NSW 2052

AUSTRALIA

https://unsw.press/

© Tim Dunlop 2022

First published 2022

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher.

Design Josephine Pajor-Markus

Cover design Phil Campbell

Cover image (wings) S-S-S, iStock by Getty Images

Printer Griffin Press

All reasonable efforts were taken to obtain permission to use copyright material reproduced in this book, but in some cases copyright could not be traced. The author welcomes information in this regard.

This book is printed on paper using fibre supplied from plantation or sustainably managed forests.

Contents

Introduction: The transformation of Australian politics, one kitchen table at time

Part One: Zali and the zeitgeist

1Experts for means. Citizens for ends.

Part Two: How we got to 2022

2Insiders and outsiders: The dispute at the heart of Australian politics

3Beyond two-party politics and the captured state

Part Three: In the middle, somewhat elevated

4When the country changes:

Reforming democracy for a new era

Conclusion: Raising the voices of us

Acknowledgments

Index

Introduction

The transformation of Australian politics, one kitchen table at time

Still there are seeds to be gathered, and room in the bag of stars.

Ursula K. Le Guin

On 4 April 2018, I received a private message via my Facebook page:

Hey Tim. I’m in Warringah and we’re soon to launch our movement based on the Voices4indi model (kitchen table conversations etc where they managed to vote in Cathy McGowan and boot out Sofie [sic] Mirabella). We are also going to host events, which will include author talks … I’d absolutely love you to come to Warringah and start a new conversation about the sort of future we want. We are called Voices of Warringah and our website/social media will be launching soon …

My correspondent was Louise Hislop, founder of Voices of Warringah, and later she would also be involved with Voices of Mackellar, the neighbouring electorate a little further up the coast on Sydney’s Northern Beaches. It’s not often you have in your possession – let alone addressed to you – a document that could be called historical, but I think that Facebook message has a claim to the description. It not only records the origins of an influential political movement; it also captures the tentative but determined attitude that would characterise their whole approach, and most of all, the clear-eyed optimism that drove them to believe that a better politics was possible.

It was obvious to me – as it was to all those who joined the various grassroots ‘Voices Of’¹ organisations around Australia – that there was something fundamentally wrong with the way our politics worked, and that mainstream political parties were a big part of the problem. To their eternal credit, ordinary-extraordinary Australians like Louise Hislop dreamed that a better way was possible, and they set out to make that happen and – I can barely believe it even as I write this – they succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest expectations. On 21 May 2022, Australia voted not just for change in individual seats, but for a major realignment of the way in which our political system worked.

As 2022 began, the planet was under threat from climate change; the United States was falling into turmoil; China was aggressively asserting itself throughout the Asia–Pacific; we were still dealing with the effects of a pandemic which had not just messed with our health but with how we worked and how we purchased the necessities of life (especially toilet paper); and we saw Russia launch a war in Ukraine, a reminder of the fragility of the international order, including the economic supply chains that kept us all clothed and fed. We were wearing masks, and desperately seeking RATs, and theories of society most of us thought had disappeared with the defeat of the Nazis in 1945 were gaining a new lease on life. Frightened and frightening men’s groups and their gurus were violently trying to re-establish total control over women and their bodies, winding back generations of feminist victories. Even transformative moments, like the success of the equal marriage plebiscite, were being undermined by a new wave of anti-trans hatred, that, shamefully, would be weaponised by Scott Morrison himself during the election.

By the start of 2022, the Liberal–National Party Coalition was moving into its tenth year in office. Labor, having lost the so-called unlosable election of 2019, was doing its best to make themselves invisible, living in terror of what the Murdoch press might say about any policy they happened to come up with. The polls said Labor was well ahead, but nobody trusted the polls anymore, polling being another of the institutions we had lost faith in. Besides, for many, Labor was hardly an inspiring alternative.

Beyond all this, technology was changing how we worked, how we got our news, how we talked to each other, and it seemed constant surveillance was the price we had to pay to participate in anything from online shopping to watching the news on iView. Wages had been stagnant for years, and the Australian government had admitted this was as much by design on their part as it was to do with underlying productivity. And it was even worse for those outside the workforce. In a moment of we-are-all-in-this-together during the pandemic, welfare payments were lifted and nearly everyone living in official poverty was lifted out of that poverty, and for one, shining moment, it looked like it would stay that way. But then the new payments were withdrawn and we, as a nation, returned all those people to the poverty from which the pandemic payments had rescued them. It was what Associate Professor Elise Klein from the ANU called ‘policy-induced poverty.’ Was this really the future the land of the fair go saw for itself?

It was certainly the future Scott Morrison embraced, and let’s take a moment to consider the prime minister himself, as he was then.

The problems confronting the country were institutional – they were deeply etched in how we had structured the economy and our politics – but Scott Morrison came to embody all their worst aspects. He was a walking, talking (endlessly talking) model of everything that made us uneasy about the direction in which the country was heading. It went beyond unpopularity to something more visceral, a feeling so intense that his own campaign knew there were large numbers of electorates around the country he could not visit for fear of further suppressing the Liberal Party vote. It was an extraordinary situation, especially given that it had not always been like that. For a while, the country had been in thrall to Scott Morrison, and it felt like his reign might be eternal. He looked to have mastered the art of happy-clappy governance, breezing through his role with all the ease of the salesman he was.

He certainly had the media where he wanted them.

His avalanche approach to interviews and press conferences, where he spoke seemingly without breath for minutes at a time, along with his absolute willingness in the moment to call up down and black white, left journalists reeling. They rarely laid a glove on him. He talked over them and through them and told them he didn’t accept the premise of their questions, and they failed in performing their most basic duty of holding a prime minister to account. He also swamped the mainstream media and social media with carefully constructed images of himself being a regular bloke, building cubby houses, going to the footy, and, most of all, endlessly, making curries. When he wasn’t performing the role of daggy dad, we were inundated with photos and videos of him projecting a martial arrogance, striding down a red carpet laid out for him on the tarmac where his RAAF jet had deposited him, and saluting lines of soldiers as if he were the commander-in-chief.

The trouble was, there was no there there, and this became increasingly apparent as his prime ministership developed. When he decided to holiday in Hawaii while the country burned over the Christmas and New Year of 2019–20, declaring that he didn’t hold a hose, the spell was broken, and that phrase became his political epitaph.

The bottom line was that it felt like the world we knew was falling apart, the world we wanted was out of reach, and the head of our government was all show and no substance. We were looking for something better, and even as that something emerged from the teal mists of the Liberal Party heartland in the form of the Voices Of movement, many doubted that a bunch of women in the leafy suburbs was really going to save us. Could a political movement that began modestly in an electorate around Albury-Wodonga reinvigorate the entire body politic? Was there enough belief left in people that they might find a way to say, enough, we aren’t going to put up with this anymore?

Well, change happens slowly, then it happens fast.

The Voices Of organisations, and all the sister organisations that sprang up between the elections of 2019 and 2022, built a movement, and the candidates came: Zali Steggall, Sophie Scamps, Kylea Tink, Zoe Daniels, Allegra Spender, Monique Ryan, Kate Chaney. The media christened them ‘the teals’ – an allusion to them being from blue (Liberal) electorates and having green politics – and it became a controversial designation: chromatically inaccurate, and with an air of dismissal about it that undermined the seriousness of their mission, the importance of their grassroots origins, and the fact that they were, indeed, independents, not members of a ‘teal’ party. Eventually the name took on a more positive ring – especially when they won. Against all odds, against some of the biggest names in the modern Liberal Party, against a sometimes vicious media campaign, and a dirty, corflute-tearing ground game run by their increasingly desperate opponents, they won.

The election result of 21 May 2022, and more importantly, the way the independents went about building their support, was a significant development in the practice of Australian politics. It delivered us the right to be optimistic after years in which politicians had lost touch with the people who conferred them with democratic legitimacy. Community organisations popped up in electorates across the country – Voices of Kooyong, Voices of Goldstein, Voices of Gilmore, Voices of Hughes, Voices of Mackellar – and they turned into something extraordinary: a reinvigorated democracy that stepped outside the constraints of the two-party system that had dominated Australian politics since World War II. They were a grassroots movement reinventing the sort of country we could be. They were, in many ways, the voices of us.

In what follows, it should be clear that I am an unabashed fan of the community processes the independents deployed in the lead-up to the election. I am also happy we have had a change of government, and that Labor have been diligent in picking off the low-hanging fruit of democratic renewal ignored by the previous government – everything from the release of the Murugappan family back to Biloela in Queensland, to the dropping of charges against East Timor whistle-blower Bernard Collaery, to the abolition of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). But I temper my approval with a fear that unless we improve the integrity of our major institutions, enhance our ability to implement practical, evidence-based solutions to all the problems that confront us, and do all this in a way that involves as many community voices as possible, while sharing the spoils of success as equally as possible, then what awaits us is an antipodean version of the democratic collapse already playing out in America.

The central thought of this book is that the only way we will achieve all of this is if the community organisations that put a record number of representatives on the crossbench in 2022 continue to grow and prosper so that we are never again held hostage to a moribund two-party system. In her opening speech to parliament, the new member for Goldstein in Melbourne, Zoe Daniels, quoted Vida Goldstein, the woman her electorate was named for: ‘Study has convinced me that party government is a system that is entirely out of date … It is a cumbersome, unbusinesslike method of running the country.’ What was true in the early 20th century when Goldstein wrote those words is even truer now. We are a diverse and complex nation of 25 million people, and 25 million simply doesn’t go into two. Approaches to issues such as constitutional recognition of First Nations people as the next step towards a formal treaty, the liberation of women from the strictures of patriarchy, and the inevitable challenges of climate change are not the province of a single party or organisation. No single party can provide all the answers, and we should build a politics that allows diverse views to be heard, not mandates to be imposed.

The election result of 21 May 2022 gave us some breathing space, but it was the beginning of a process of reform, not the end, and to capitalise on the opportunity we have created, we need to think about our country differently. In particular, we need to discard the idea of Australia being ‘the lucky country’. The author of that phrase, Donald Horne, has said that ‘When I invented the phrase in 1964 to describe Australia … I didn’t mean that it had a lot of material resources,