Of Teal Independents and Greens: Australia’s Diversifying Political Stage

Australia’s political system has generally been organized around two major blocs. Since the mid-1940s these have been the Labor Party and a permanent coalition between the typically urban Liberal Party and the rural-based National Party. The system has also provided enough oxygen for other parties and political movements to gain occasional traction. There have been reasonably strong third party forces and always strong local independent candidates represented in the parliament.

Yet over the past few decades Australians have become increasingly disillusioned with the two major blocs. In the 1993 election, 90 percent of the public cast their first preference in Australia’s ranked choice voting system to either Labor or the Coalition, yet in last month’s federal election this percentage was around 70 percent. Labor won government away from the Coalition with less than one-third of the primary vote.

Australia’s ranked choice voting system (or preferential voting as it is called locally) has a tendency for votes to eventually find their way back to either Labor or the Coalition. It is designed to build a consensus of each voting district by giving people the option to vote for a candidate who best reflects their beliefs, but to also provide an opinion on candidates who are more likely to win the seat. As the Labor Party’s primary vote has fallen in recent decades it has still been able to maintain a large number of seats due to preferences from people who have given their first choice to the Greens.

Yet Australia’s compulsory voting has bred a public that is highly astute as to how the system works and how it can be weaponized against politicians believed to have lost touch with community values. In particular, the latest election was notable for the rise of a loose movement of female independent candidates, who launched a devastating assault on a number of the Liberal Party’s most prized seats in the wealthy, and highly educated, suburbs of Sydney, Melbourne, and Perth.

These women, and the community groups that backed them, understood that if an independent candidate could bring themselves up to second place on primary votes, and pull the Liberal candidate’s primary vote down below 45 percent, then they would be able to gain enough preference from Labor and the Greens to win the seat. In six seats they were able to achieve this with ease, taking out a number of the Liberal Party’s senior figures and future hopes.

This movement has been dubbed the “teal independents” as an amalgamation of the Liberal Party’s blue and the green of the environmental movement. They seized upon an ideological split in the Liberal Party and made firmer action on climate change a central issue of their campaigns. Despite sharing ideas and values, the movement understood that to consolidate into a party would undermine their credibility as a political force. They knew that the public would be suspicious if their incentives were they bound to a party machine, rather than community interests.

The movement away from the major parties has also been fruitful for the Greens. Since the 1990s the party has been Australia’s primary third political force, able to win a strong number of seats in the Senate due to its system of proportional representation. The Greens have not, however, been able to make deep inroads into the House of Representatives, winning and maintaining a single seat in central Melbourne from 2010, but failing to gain traction elsewhere. Yet this election saw the party pick up an additional two seats in central Brisbane. Southeast Queensland’s recent floods shifted many voters toward the party.

Climate change was one of the defining issues of the election, partially because the major parties have been reluctant to talk about it. This reluctance offered both the Greens and the teal independents the space to run with an issue that is clearly important to the public, and is driving much of the suspicion toward the major parties.

While it is positive that Australia’s political system offers the public space to advance critical issues through support for parties and candidates outside of the major parties, the dwindling support for these parties is not all being directed into positive movements. Over 1 million people cast their votes for two parties that suggest a greater unease with Australian politics: the far-right One Nation, which is hostile to modern, multicultural Australia; and the United Australia Party, a personal hobby project of erratic billionaire Clive Palmer, who has used his wealth to spam the country with misinformation and disinformation about a range of topics, most prominently the COVID-19 vaccines.

Although these parties failed to win seats, they gained enough support to present a nascent but serious social problem for Australia. This support also demonstrates the delicate balance of trust and distrust present in Australia. While community-led movements like the teal independents have electrified and fortified Australia’s democracy, sending a strong signal to the major parties to improve their behavior or be replaced, there are other forces in the country that are less positive.