One of the defining features of the last election was the emergence of the so-called teal or community independents.
Backed by political crowdfunding group Climate 200 and running primarily on platforms demanding better action on climate change, teal candidates snatched a host of once-safe Liberal seats, helping to create the largest crossbench in Australian history.
A key question this time around is how many of those seats will remain in independent hands, and whether any will revert back to supporting the Coalition.
Some appear unlikely to shift.
Zali Steggal (who has said she isn’t receiving Climate 200 funding, despite appearing on the organisation’s website) has held Warringah since 2019, and extended her margin to beyond 10 per cent last election.
While neither Helen Haines nor Andrew Wilkie run under teal banners – they both prefer shades of orange – they are both supported by Climate 200.
Indi, where Haines has a margin of almost 9 per cent, has voted independent since 2013, and Wilkie has been Clark’s MP since long before Climate 200 even existed. With a margin of more than 20 per cent, his is one of the safest seats in the country.
While the Australian Electoral Commission has listed Allegra Spender’s seat of Wentworth as an ultra-marginal one, election analysts have her margin somewhere between 6 and 9 per cent.
Curtin, on the other hand, will be a battle for Kate Chaney – whose grandfather and uncle, Fred Chaney Senior and Junior, were both senior Liberal politicians – to retain with just a 1.32 per cent margin.
It’s considered the most likely teal electorate to change colour this year.
Others are also up in the air, but the exact margins are difficult to judge due to redistribution.
Zoe Daniel will again face former Liberal assistant minister Tim Wilson in Melbourne’s Goldstein, and in Sydney’s Northern Beaches Sophie Scamps is being challenged by James Brown for Mackellar.
The AEC has the margin for both listed as 1.8 per cent, indicating they could both be genuine coin-tosses, but most independent analysts are putting the figure for each around the mid-3 per cent range.
The status of Kooyong, currently held by Monique Ryan (who famously defeated then-treasurer Josh Frydenberg in 2022), is even more debated.
According to the AEC, the margin is 2.5 per cent, similar to the estimate put forward by the ABC’s Antony Green (2.2 per cent), but others range from as little as 0.1 per cent to up around 4 per cent.
At any rate, it’s a seat the Liberals would dearly love to win back, and they’ve nominated Amelia Hamer, the grandniece of former Victorian premier Sir Rupert Hamer, to do just that.
Redistribution has cost the crossbench one MP, with the abolition of North Sydney leaving Kylea Tink without a seat to contest.
At the same time, it may deliver a replacement. Neighbouring Bradfield has absorbed large parts of the electorate that voted for Tink, and has an existing teal candidate in Nicolette Boele.
She lost the seat to long-serving Liberal moderate Paul Fletcher in 2022, but he isn’t running again, having announced his retirement from politics late last year.
Without an incumbent MP, there is a genuine chance Bradfield could fall to the crossbench this year.
It was the only Liberal-held seat in the entire country that voted in favour of the Voice to parliament – no doubt a reason why the party preselected local executive Gisele Kapterian over prominent No campaigner Warren Mundine.
Climate 200 is throwing its support behind dozens more candidates – self-styled “maroon independent” is challenging Opposition Leader Peter Dutton in Queensland, for example – but the two most likely to break through to parliament are Alex Dyson and Caz Heise.
Both are departures from the teal norm from 2022 in that they’re running in seats well away from city centres.
Former Triple J presenter Dyson is challenging Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan for Wannon in Victoria’s west, while lawyer Heise is up against National Pat Conaghan in Cowper, which straddles Coffs Harbour and Port Macquarie on the NSW North Coast.
Both ran their opponents close in 2022, and need swings of just 3.5 and 2.4 per cent respectively to go one step further this time around.
Elsewhere, the independents are more of a long shot.
Kate Hook is running in what looms as a three-way tussle for Calare with sitting MP Andrew Gee, who was elected as a National but went independent over its stance on the Voice to parliament, and new Nationals candidate Sam Farraway.
Marathon runner Erchana Murray-Bartlett is looking to capitalise on former Liberal minister Karen Andrews’ retirement in McPherson, and Victorian Father of the Year Ben Smith is hoping to win Flinders, but both would be surprise winners.
One other independent-held seat worth watching is Monash – although it’s certainly not teal territory.
Similarly to Calare, it was won by a Coalition MP in 2022: Liberal Russell Broadbent, who’s been in parliament since 1990.
Like Gee, Broadbent quit his party, this time in 2023 after he lost preselection for the seat to executive Mary Aldred.
He’s announced he will run again in what will be his 14th federal election, posing a potential wrinkle for the Coalition in what is notionally a Liberal seat.
