The brand images of independents and minor parties are now totally confused because in the Senate the antics of so-called independents who flit backwards and forwards are almost unbelievable. The time is right then, when the independent/micro party brand has been so badly damaged, to look at the success stories in the non-major party world.
The Greens, often side-lined in current debates, have largely held together despite their bitter internal arguments and divisions in places like their NSW branch and in Batman in Victoria. They have managed the leadership transition from Bob Brown to Christine Milne and then to Richard di Natale and voted together as a unified Senate team throughout the Rudd-Gillard-Abbott-Turnbull years. More importantly they have maintained deep, grass-roots community links and attracted extensive, and often youthful, representation in local governments and state parliaments.
Cathy McGowan (pictured), independent MHR for Indi (Victoria) since 2013, has also been successful. The Indi story has been dissected by Associate Professor Carolyn Hendricks of ANU in the Australian Journal of Political Science and her article, called 'Citizen-led democratic reform', should be read by anyone interested in independent or minor party politics. The ingredients were displayed earlier this month in Wodonga in a workshop for 'people interested in representing their community by standing as a candidate at a local, state or federal election or people seeking to support a future candidate'.
This workshop, 'Getting Elected to Represent Your Community', was presented by Voices4Indi, the community movement behind McGowan's election, which has grown and diversified to be a powerful force for community education, engagement and activism in the wider north-east Victoria region. This intensive workshop was addressed not only by Hendricks and myself, but also by Mary Crooks of the Victorian Women's Trust on 20 years of the trust's 'Kitchen Table Conversation Model', which is a successful approach to grass-roots-led change in organisations and in political representation.
McGowan spoke too, along with other successful Independents like the State Member for Shepparton District, Suzanna Sheed, and young Independent and Green new-style local government representatives, including Dr Amanda Cohn, Greens Deputy Mayor of Albury, and Jenny O'Connor, Independent Mayor of Indigo Shire Council.
Yet work-shopping in Wodonga we seemed to be in a parallel universe because, in the middle of such positive energy, Pauline Hanson's One Nation Party was disintegrating once again. But that was just one example of failure and confusion as Independents Nick Xenophon, Cory Bernardi and Jacqui Lambie