Community Strong Australia might not be the strongest name, and its logo less than transfixing, but Michael Pascoe reckons CSA senators are on the way.
With all eyes on One Hanson’s polling and the short-shift horserace media generally give the community independents movement, Zali Steggall and Allegra Spender have launched the Community Strong Australia non-party party. It faces a tough battle to reach official minor party status, but that doesn’t mean it won’t.
The antipathy of traditional media towards the “teals” and the general conservatism of political coverage will make it hard for the unconventional party to gain much coverage, although that’s not the way community independents have succeeded anyway.
None of the eight existing lower house independents – no, I’m not counting Bob Katter – is there on the traditional top-down political process.
It has been genuine community support for the concept of a quality candidate dedicated to core values of integrity, equality, climate and middle-of-the-road economics that delivered the word-of-mouth, donations and volunteers that succeeded.
The Hanson rise
While everyone has been concentrating on Hanson’s rise and the Labor and LNP falls, independents have been quietly holding their poorly measured ground. And that, if it can be transferred to a Senate ticket, would be more than enough to win a place at the policy bargaining table.
More immediately, the present polling turmoil has ignited the very real possibility of the existing eight holding the balance of power in the lower house. It’s still a long way to the next election, but the Hanson polling bombshell, Albanese’s fading fortunes, and whatever the Coalition is doing mean a close result is most likely.
Meanwhile, the latest DemosAU poll for Capital Brief will serve as an example of the independents’ latent force. The headline was One Hanson scoring 30% primary votes ahead of 27% Labor and just 18% LNP.
The Greens managed 13% while the widely overlooked independent vote was 12 per cent.
The primary votes for Labor, LNP and Hanson have changed radically since last year’s election (Labor 35%, LNP 31, Hanson 6). The Greens and independents, not so much. The AEC recorded 12.2% Greens, 7.3% “Independent”, and the various rats and mice making up about the same again.
It’s all about the Senate
As previously reported here, the strength of community independents voting is inadequately measured because only a minority of seats have that choice.
Only 35 of the 150 House of Reps seats had community independent candidates. Eight won, but 29 received primary votes in the double digits, 22 of them more than 14%. With half-reasonable preference flows and candidates in more seats supporting a Senate ticket, those numbers are more than enough to win representation in the upper house.
And therein lies the biggest challenge, the really hard part to win in the Senate: getting volunteers across all the polling booths, let alone on the ground beforehand.
To have a chance, the new Community Strong Australia brand would need the support of independents who won’t go as far as joining themselves.
Kate Chaney and Monique Ryan have ruled out being part of the CSA. They and the volunteers who support them could nevertheless also support a CSA Senate ticket if they’re serious about integrity, equality, climate and economic management.
How could they not? Barring a hung parliament, the political leverage in Australia is all in a Senate dominated by assorted party worthies and odds and sods, most of them there purely out of loyality to the machines that delivered them preselection, not to their state community.
For Chaney and Ryan to wash their hands of Senate candidates of their own ilk would look suspiciously like a lack of integrity.
It won’t be easy. CSA will be persistently sniped at by the two old major parties fighting wars on three fronts. Traditional media will continue to do what it has been doing, mainly assisting the sniping. There aren’t enough volunteers to go round, to populate electorates presently without community independent lower house candidates.
But there is a significant desire in the electorate for the chance to vote for quality candidates putting their communities’ core values first.
Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.