One of the most interesting democratic movements in recent years has been that of Australia. Community Independents Project. The movement is a grassroots initiative, based on an intimate understanding of local concerns and the sharing of political organizing tactics. Although its origins In a rural electorate, the movement enjoyed its greatest success in the country’s wealthiest and most educated seats, where suspicion of the Liberal Party in its once safest seats grew.
Yet the movement now finds itself at a crossroads on how to proceed, with several independents elected via the model considering training a political party. If they did, it would mark the next stage of the divide in Australian politics. It can also pose a huge risk to what made the movement attractive in the first place.
The impetus for the discussion on the formation of a new party came from the Australian party new campaign finance laws. These laws introduce caps on donations and campaign spending, as well as stricter disclosure rules. To make up for the loss of private revenue, established parties would receive tens of millions of dollars more in public funding. While these laws were ostensibly designed to reduce the influence of big money in politics, they also serve to raise the bar for new political entrants, thereby creating considerable advantages for incumbents.
This financial crisis is now pushing independent MPs to wonder whether or not they can remain structurally independent. Although their political appeal rests on their distance from the tribalism and negative incentives of political parties, forming a party would unlock access to the donation structures and administrative funding that the new laws deliberately reserve for registered parties. This puts independents in a bind.
But these discussions could also be due to the opening of ideological space within Australian politics, with the Liberal Party having lost the ability to think clearly about what kind of party it is and how to communicate with the public.
The Liberal Party was formed in 1944, as a merger of the country’s conservative and liberal political forces in an attempt to counter the strength of the Labor Party. The post-World War II ideological environment allowed such a party to be coherent and remain united – because to be conservative was to work in defense of liberalism. However, without the great ideological battle with the Soviet Union and thanks to the emergence of new radical political entrepreneurs like US President Donald Trump, this commitment to liberalism has diminished.
This created the space for the Community Independents project. Offering a politically coherent commitment to economic and social liberalism, with a major concern for the environment, the movement was able to build itself thanks to seats favorable to these political ideals. With the Liberal Party politically confused and weighed down by its symbiotic relationship with News Corp’s increasingly radical media, it struggled to compete in well-educated seats.
The now enormous threat from the One Nation party has only intensified this problem. The Liberal Party responded to the rise of One Nation in a manner predictable way: He has sought to escalate reactionary rhetoric in an attempt to win over those who are now showing support for One Nation. There is, however, an obvious problem with this approach. People attracted to reactionary rhetoric are always I’m going to go the real deal rather than the imitation. At no time did the Liberal Party think that the best tactic would be to explain to people why One Nation poses a threat to the country.
This created greater political space for a new liberal party. If the Liberals and One Nation are now both trying to make the public angrier, more chaotic and more prone to grievance, Labor cannot remain the only adult in the room. A new party of responsible actors committed to liberal principles that the Liberal Party abandons makes sense both politically and structurally.
Of course, all of this is easier said than done. Two independents have already signaled their refusal to join a new party, and forming a party would naturally lead to groupthink, internal power dynamics and leadership contests that plague other parties.
However, the Community Independents Project has already broken model for the political organization of the country; they could apply this same thinking and break the political party model as well. There may be an opportunity to create an arrangement closer to the structure of 19th-century Westminster, where party discipline was weak and MPs were primarily concerned with representing their local constituents, while still having a consultation and research structure for wider domestic and foreign policy issues.
This could be an opportunity to circumvent campaign finance laws and take advantage of Australia’s current political divide.