17-05-2025
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
Package teal: The independent movement, three years on
Elsewhere in Sydney, the teal line held firm. Sophie Scamps retained Mackellar with a swing, Zali Steggall held Warringah, and Allegra Spender stayed on in Wentworth. The only departing teal was Kylea Tink, whose North Sydney seat was abolished.
Victoria: Teal cracks show
The sole teal upset came in Victoria, with Zoe Daniel all but assumed to have lost Goldstein to former Liberal MP Tim Wilson in a dramatic rematch (although a recount is still on the cards). Daniel beat Wilson in 2022, but this time Wilson pulled ahead on postal votes after Daniel prematurely claimed victory on election night.
The margin in the see-sawing count narrowed again in recent days, but most observers predict Wilson will win – just.
His triumph was historic: the first Liberal to reclaim a seat from an independent, and the first to defeat a teal incumbent. He dubbed himself a 'teal slayer' and borrowed from their campaign playbook – early corflutes, branded T-shirts, and 'coffee swarms'.
While Daniel focused on national issues like climate policy and tax reform, Wilson zeroed in on hyper-local concerns around crime and planning, despite them being state matters. He also targeted Goldstein's 10 per cent Jewish community, calling himself a Zionist and criticising Daniel's support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.
Wilson's win came despite being outspent by Daniel, who raised more than $1.8 million – including $570,000 from Climate 200 – and, like other incumbents, had the advantage of publicly funded office resources running into the hundreds of thousands.
Wilson said his $1 million campaign was partly self-funded, but he disclosed no donations pre-election, in line with the minimum requirements under federal rules.
Third-party groups – Australians for Prosperity, Better Australia, and Repeal the Teal – ran aggressive attack ads against Daniel. Two of these had direct Liberal links.
'The teals are not an unstoppable force,' Wilson said. 'No matter how large their chequebook, it can be beaten by a strong Liberal heart and a courageous Liberal heart.'
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Monique Ryan survived a tough battle in Kooyong after a redistribution added Liberal-leaning areas such as Toorak and Malvern from the abolished neighbouring electorate of Higgins. Her six-point 2022 victory over Josh Frydenberg was reduced to a slim margin – 50.6 per cent after preferences, or just 1400 votes as of Saturday – following a strong challenge from Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer.
Anticipating a tight race, Ryan's team knocked on 55,000 doors and raised $1.1 million from 2683 donors (including $47,000 from Climate 200) since the start of the year. Hamer's campaign cost around $1.5 million, according to a Liberal party spokesman.
Kenny noted that the Melbourne teals had a rougher ride than their Sydney counterparts due to a number of small but compounding factors: the unpopularity of the Allan Labor state government, local law and order issues in affluent suburbs, and less favourable boundary changes.
'So a lot of small things adding up to pretty difficult circumstances,' he said.
Added to this was the sizeable Jewish population in both electorates – larger in Goldstein.
'There's obviously quite a strong pro-Israel vote in Goldstein … so I think that's probably not helped [Daniel], either. And given that we're talking about such fine margins, you don't need big shifts in any of these things for it to matter.'
Kenny and other analysts said while then-opposition leader Peter Dutton was not popular, the vitriol felt for him was not comparable to Scott Morrison in 2022 – most notably because Dutton was not prime minister.
Still, Dutton mostly stayed clear of teal seats, where he was seen as a liability.
'That anti-Dutton message doesn't work quite as well … particularly as we got later in the campaign, and it became clear that he wasn't going to win,' analyst Ben Raue, of The Tally Room blog and podcast, said.
'Dutton stayed away from these seats, he was no help there. If Tim Wilson gets re-elected [in Goldstein], it's not thanks to him.'
Unlike Bradfield in NSW, the Liberal candidates in Goldstein and Kooyong also had long lead-in times – Wilson began campaigning almost as soon as he lost in 2022, while Hamer was preselected for Kooyong more than a year out from the election. Both candidates mounted strong ground games.
Beyond the city: High hopes, hard limits
Regional Victoria was also disappointing terrain for independent candidates hoping to make fresh inroads.
Helen Haines comfortably retained Indi with 58.5 per cent of the vote after a minuscule swing against her (-0.41 per cent), but no new Climate 200 candidates broke through.
Wannon, held by Liberal MPs (including former prime Minister Malcolm Fraser) since 1955, proved resilient to the teal pitch for a third time. Dan Tehan's campaign, assisted by right-wing lobby Advance, framed Alex Dyson – a comedian and podcaster – as a 'Green in disguise' and even a 'clown'.
The result was a modest swing to Tehan, now a rising power in the diminished Coalition.
Touted contests in peri-urban Flinders, on the Mornington Peninsula, and regional Monash, covering parts of Gippsland, failed to fire, despite independent candidates snatching double-figure primary votes.
No inroads were made elsewhere in NSW: Berowra (won by Liberal Julian Leeser), Gilmore (Labor's Fiona Phillips), Cowper (Nationals' Pat Conaghan), Calare (National-turned-independent Andrew Gee), Lyne (Nationals' Alison Penfold), Farrer (now Liberal leader Sussan Ley), or Riverina (Nationals' Michael McCormack).
Kenny said regional seats were less susceptible to independent challengers unless they were former Nationals – like Andrew Gee or Bob Katter.
'The Nats have done quite well, and the reasons for that is that these country electorates, or regional electorates, tend to be very stable, population-wise,' he said.
'They tend to still reflect the somewhat older model of people being loyal to a particular party consistently and perhaps even intergenerationally.'
Climate 200-backed independents failed to take any of the six Queensland seats they contested – although Holmes à Court has said Ellie Smith, who ran in Dutton's seat of Dickson, holds some responsibility for unseating the opposition leader by sending preferences to Labor's Ali France.
Do the teals still matter? And to whom?
Holmes à Court said the election result was 'a strong endorsement' for community independents and noted that independents had finished in the top two candidates in 22 electorates. He noted that 1 million Australians voted for an independent and that independents enjoyed the strongest swing, marginally ahead of Labor.
'But politics is brutal, right? There's, there's no silver medal,' he admitted.
Psephologist Kevin Bonham was more blunt. He said the teals were 'a side show'.
'The whole election was very heavily about what people thought of the Coalition and the influence of Trump making people wary of change,' he said.
'The sort of the issues that the teals campaign on were big things in 2022, and they're just not the same deal any more to a lot of voters.'
Labor's massive majority means it doesn't need support from the independents to pass legislation and has a reliable Greens bloc in the Senate.
Kenny says the teals could still be influential in the political discussion.
'They're articulate. They're professional. It's what differentiates them from a lot of the hacks that the major parties [field],' he said.
'Zali Steggall made this point very well. She's not had the balance of power in either of the two last parliaments, but still been able to get quite a lot done in terms of legislation that she's either sponsored or championed in one way or another, or made amendments to through negotiations.'
Perhaps where the teals remain most significant is in what their presence means for the Liberal Party. Of the 35 candidates backed by Climate 200, only five targeted Labor-held seats – in Bean, Fremantle, Franklin, Gilmore and Solomon – and all were unsuccessful. The movement's greatest impact continues to be as a thorn in the side of the conservative party. However, Ghazarian noted that the mixed results for the teals signal volatility among voters.
'This result suggests that it's still not conclusive about the longevity of the teals and that voters are still willing to go back or to support the Liberal Party if the candidate and the local campaign resonates with their preferences and with their aspirations,' he said.
Despite likely regaining Goldstein, the Liberal Party will remain in the political wilderness if it cannot win back the inner-city metropolitan seats it has lost to the teals, according to Kenny.
'[Liberal leader] Sussan Ley seems to be saying the right things now about steering the Liberal Party back to where the Australian people are – in other words, back to the mainstream centre,' he said.
'I think that represents some sort of recognition of what they've lost to the teals and to mainstream Australia, and therefore, by definition, you have to say it at least potentially presents a threat to the teals as well. Because the teals – that's the ground they're looking to occupy. But it's also the ground, broadly speaking, that Albanese is looking to occupy as well.
'It's pretty crowded territory, that middle ground – so if the Libs want back in there, they're going to have to do so with more than rhetoric.'
Holmes à Court agreed. Even if the Liberals managed to put forward candidates that teal voters might, in theory, support, he argued the power of the movement now came from the social energy and sense of purpose surrounding it.
'One phrase I've heard many times over the last year is 'active hope',' he said.
'The first time I heard the phrase from a Sophie Scamps volunteer. The vollie explained, 'I could stay home and throw the remote every time Dutton comes on the telly or yell at my husband how Murdoch is destroying democracy, but volunteering gives me hope and the satisfaction that I did something meaningful when it mattered'.'
'The Liberal Party would have to change quite dramatically to inspire Australians to join – let alone volunteer.'
