From its foundations in 2012 in the rural electorate of Indi, the Community Independents movement continues to gain momentum across the nation. Its growing uptake is proof of the concept that community-centred politics has strong appeal.
In 2021, 300 participants from eighty electorates attended the first Community Independents Project Convention. In June 2024, at the fourth Convention, over 1000 from 125 electorates tuned in. People wanted to learn, connect, exchange ideas, share motivation, be inspired and discuss the practicalities of the grass-roots organising needed to have a community independent candidate stand and win in their electorate.
This article is an insider’s perspective on some aspects of the Community Independents movement—what has worked and why during these first twelve years, and some discussion of their challenges and opportunities. I will leave it to others to debate the role of parties or offer commentary on particular policy positions or voting decisions of various MPs.
In the beginning, when the local leaders gathered to form ‘Voice for Indi’ they made some assumptions: that electing a community independent and moving a seat from ‘safe’ to ‘marginal’ would be a strategy, not only an outcome—a strategy that if effectively implemented would result in improved policies and more effective governance relationships between those governed and the powers of the government. The people in Indi were particularly interested in improving rural policy and seeking better service delivery in areas including health, public transport, and internet and mobile phone coverage.
There was also an assumption that people’s feelings about politics, government and democracy, at that stage very negative, would change if they were more engaged and included in the political process.
Acting on these assumptions, the proposed vision for Indi was:
- an active twenty-first-century democracy based on civic engagement, respect and ideas.
- an electorate with a range of strong and competitive candidates.
- leadership with vision that truly represented, and delivered for, the people of Indi.
Five indicators of success were nominated:
- that the people of Indi would be recognised for their progressive and interesting ideas, and for transforming these into action.
- that Indi would become known nationally for the way its citizens engage and for their enthusiasm for new ideas to build their community.
- that Indi would become a case study for ‘grass-roots’ community engagement.
- that Indi would be recognised for its innovation in connecting its citizens.
- that Indi would have a respected independent candidate who improved public discourse across the electorate and attracted wide support from voters at the 2013 election.
The success in the election in 2013 delivered the first stage of the planned strategy.
Six years later, in 2019, the people of Indi reaffirmed their choice and made history by electing another professional woman, Helen Haines, as their community independent parliamentary representative. The inner-city, safe, conservative electorate of Warringah also elected its own independent woman, Zali Steggall, to represent it in parliament. Warringah shared with Indi a dissatisfaction with the incumbent and a desire for better policy, particularly on climate.
The wins continued in the 2022 election. Steggall and Haines were re-elected with 61 per cent and 59 per cent of two-party preferred votes respectively. Six new independents were also elected in safe conservative seats previously held by the Liberals. And in the Australian Capital Territory, David Pocock, running as an independent, was elected to a Senate seat formerly held by the Liberals.
The strongest take-away from the four successive elections since 2013, and especially the 2022 election, is the proof of concept. The Community Independents model has demonstrated its durability. The assumption behind putting community at the centre of politics—that people would be interested in politics when a sense of belonging, connectedness and empowerment were central to their engagement—has proved to have validity.
What is it about the Community Independents movement that makes it so attractive to communities? The movement has found a way to get around the creeping public disengagement with politics. It is remarkable that so many people volunteer their time, energy and resources to make something happen, not via protest but through direct representation in a sovereign parliament. Democracy rests on the interest and actions of everyday people: individuals engaging in kitchen-table conversations, coordinating town hall meetings, and then, with the information they have gathered, voting in the best interests of themselves and their community.
Such active engagement and participation at local, state and national levels makes for a strong democracy.
Over the past decade communities have achieved so many wins. Not only wins in electing their chosen representatives to parliament but in running effective, fun, engaging, relevant and inclusive campaigns. Wins in understanding the political system—not the least of which has been fully grasping the way preferential voting works. In putting their issues on the national agenda. In making ‘safe’ seats marginal and setting their electorates up for victory in the next election.
These wins, and indeed the effectiveness of the Community Independents model, have three key elements: community, candidates and campaigns.
Community is more than a collection of voters. It’s what inspires local leadership, channels political motivation and facilitates local organising. Effective community engagement in politics has been fuelled by the sense of fun, enjoyment and accomplishment that comes with belonging and working purposefully with people with whom you have shared interests, for the benefit of the community and nation.
And community leadership is never one person. It’s always a group of people who are able to engage effectively with diverse groups. In Indi we started with twelve community leaders, a shared vision, agreed values and an innovative engagement strategy based around kitchen-table conversations—and always, an invitation to be part of a bigger cause, accompanied by a warm welcome that says ‘you too can belong to this tribe’.
The building of the tribe and open inclusiveness are modelled by the leaders. They know there’s a job for everybody and a place for everyone; there’s a lot of work to do and it needs many hands. Working together builds a sense of belonging, and increases people’s skills. Most people relished the opportunity to learn about politics and the political system, acquire new skills and new connections, and, surprisingly, make friends.
The growing of leaders who can enable people-centred politics to be effectively activated, while a fundamental ingredient of the movement, is not without its challenges. Building leadership capacity is made even more complex given the largely volunteer base of the workforce, its diversity, and—especially in rural areas—the cost of travel and the limited number of people available to assume these leadership roles.
The candidate’s most important attribute is their ability to represent their community. Therefore, it is critical that the community has an agreed process to find and endorse a candidate. The candidate, in turn, commits to a compact with their constituents to proactively seek to understand their views and genuinely represent them in parliament. In return, the community commits to campaigning for the candidate, and should they be elected, to support and collaborate with them as well as holding them to account.
While the concept of a compact is relatively easily understood, the mechanisms for its negotiations are more complex. During the early days of a group’s existence, it can be relatively easy to agree on a set of commitments, based for example on the outcomes of kitchen-table conversations or similar surveys of issues. However, as the community matures, especially with the successful election of an MP, the design process of negotiation becomes more nuanced, and accountability processes more important.
Where the community is skillfully engaged and its issues known and acknowledged, where the candidate has won the confidence of the community and demonstrated a commitment to its identified values and behaviours, the campaign becomes the competition and opportunity of serious choice.
However there is more to the movement than community engagement. What about the original assumption that the Community Independents movement would bring about better governance and improved decisions—that having more independents as MPs who put their communities at the centre of their politics would actually increase the effectiveness of parliament?
Is it working? Is the model living up to its promise—is it proving to be better; is the cross-bench able to produce better governance; is parliament more effective?
While it’s still early days, there is strong evidence that the Community Independents model is delivering. In Indi there has been not only significant improvement in the quality and level of representation and active engagement in politics, but also increased investment in infrastructure and improvement in basic levels of service delivery, especially in areas such as transport and telecommunications. In the national arena there are many examples of legislation being introduced and amended by the community independents, with positive results. For example, they played a pivotal role in the design and delivery of the National Integrity Commission.
The next test
The next test for the movement’s durability will be the 2025 election. Will the voters continue to endorse the Community Independents model? If the number of people turning up to community events and town hall meetings, and of volunteers engaging in door-knocking and community conversations is an indication, they will.
But ahead there are new challenges. If it’s possible to make a comparison between the Community Independents movement and a business, these first twelve years have been starting up, proving the concept and gaining market share. The next step is the consolidation of the model. Parallels include managing growth, funding, distribution, quality control and people.
Some challenges for this growth stage include:
- Organisational structure: The Community Independents movement reflects a distributed organisational structure. While there is sharing and networking between electorates, responsibility, accountability and authority are held within each community.
- Consolidation: Are there opportunities for this to take place? What will this mean for the independence of the process?
- Compacts with MPs: The compacts between candidates, elected MPs and communities are built on locally owned processes, accountability, transparency and trust. Will the initial processes established during the start-up phrase be suitable to manage a diversity of issues, conflicts and accountability measures as the number of people involved in each electorate grows, and as the number of electorates involved in the movement grows?
- Succession planning: Within the community, the levels of skill and knowledge needed to manage these processes are considerable. Are there opportunities across the movement for sharing training, and skill development?
Money and the funding of the movement are a constant source of discussion. There is a real tension between being independent and accepting funding. The independence of each community, and the independence of candidates and MPs, are tightly held. As well as abiding by Australian Electoral Commission regulations, each community group in each electorate has its own rules for ensuring transparency, accountability, and most importantly independence.
As always, the undercurrent of gender is at play; the reality that the majority of the community independent MPs are women, and so by far are the majority of volunteers. Community and community ways of working are by their very nature feminised. Can this survive and thrive in the ‘man-made’ power structures that have historically characterised our national politics?
Attracting, retaining and training staff, while not restricted to the Community Independents movement, is a constant challenge. There are no formal professional qualifications available for training up MP staff or campaign directors, volunteer co-ordinators or community engagement specialists.
Offering relevant, progressive policy options is a key differential for the Community Independents movement. However, from a regional perspective, there is a serious lack of research or design processes for providing innovative, collaborative solutions, particularly those relevant to the people who live in rural electorates.
The nation transition of the economy to net zero is a case in point. While it is a nationally agreed policy position, its implementation and delivery will have the most impact in rural, regional and remote Australia. The transmission lines and towers, the generation of power—whether it be nuclear or renewable—the employment of skilled labour, infrastructure and environmental impacts are all topics of direct relevance to regional communities.
This lack of relevant regional policy is a significant challenge for the growth of the movement in the regions.
The uptake of the Community Independents movement around the country has generated new hope for politics and for democracy. But there is no room for complacency as big challenges continue to appear. It’s well to remember that political campaigns are about competition, and is not beyond the capacity of the traditional parties to run superior, winning campaigns. In the 2022 Victorian state election, the state seat of Shepparton’s effective two-term local Independent MP Susannah Sheed and Mildura Independent Ali Cupper both lost to the effective campaigning of the National Party. As the Community Independents movement evolves, so too will the campaigning strategies of the parties.
For those readers interested in learning more about this movement, I can recommend the Community Independents Project website, and particularly the keynote ‘People Powered Democracy and Shifting Power to the People’. This project has been at the heart of the growth of the movement, and is a great source of information.
Disclosure
Cathy McGowan was a director of the Community Independents Project from 2021 to 2024.