Independent candidate for Wentworth Allegra Spender (Image: AAP/Bianca De Marchi)

When Joe Hockey said this week that if the seat of North Sydney was lost in the election, he would rather it was won by Labor than an independent, he wasn’t joking.

Interviewed on ABC Radio, the former Liberal treasurer said the Liberal Party was “at serious risk” of losing the seat, and added that it was much harder to win a seat back from an independent than the opposing side.

He’s right. The success of Cathy McGowan in Indi shows that when an independent wins they usually hang on to it. Zali Steggall, who rid us of Tony Abbott in 2019, is also on track to keep her seat of Warringah.

The voters of North Sydney like independents. Ted Mack was an independent local, state and federal politician in the area for a grand total of 22 years. Hockey did not win the seat back for the Liberals until Mack retired in 1996.

The seats of North Sydney and Wentworth, on either side of Sydney’s harbour, are in the balance. The electorates are quite similar with wealthy, well-educated voters who have good jobs in law, banking and IT. And they’re fed up with politics as usual.  

Support for the progressive independent candidates — Allegra Spender in Wentworth and Kylea Tink in North Sydney — is part of a growing trend away from the two major parties. (Fun fact, Spender’s father, John, held the seat of North Sydney for the Liberal Party for 10 years.)

Tink has been asked how she feels about the prospect of removing incumbent Trent Zimmerman, a moderate Liberal, from the Parliament. “The party’s health is not my responsibility,” she said. “It’s the community’s health.”

Although Zimmerman has held the seat since 2015, he was not reendorsed until last month due to a protracted and damaging factional dispute within the Liberal Party. Tink, a former CEO of a cancer charity, said the delay had disadvantaged him and made it harder to coordinate his campaign.  

“It shows that the Libs are out of touch with our community,” she said. “It’s not about representing the people of North Sydney — it’s all about their own internal politicking. It’s such a disservice to the community.”

Over the years, fewer and fewer Australians have aligned with the major parties. This is reflected in the ballot box as well as party membership, donations and even volunteers handing out how-to-votes on election day. Part of the reason is an increasing distrust of party politicians.

The Australian National University has surveyed voters after every election since 1987 and published the results in the Australian Election Study. The last one, 2019, showed that trust in government had reached its lowest level on record: just one-in-four say they had confidence in their political leaders and institutions. It also found Australians’ satisfaction with democracy was at its lowest in decades.

In the survey, just 59% of Australians said they were satisfied with how democracy was working — down from the record high of 86% in 2007 (the Kevin ’07 election).

“I’ve been studying elections for 40 years, and never have I seen such poor returns for public trust in and satisfaction with democratic institutions,” lead researcher Professor Ian McAllister said. “Trust in our politicians has been on a steady downward trend since 2007, when it sat at 43%.” 

With voting compulsory, those offered a viable alternative are increasingly turning away from the major parties.

The ABC’s election guru Antony Green said successful independents require organisation, money, a well-known name, and a general sense from the voters that they have been neglected. There are no national trends, he said. It’s determined seat by seat. People might vote for parties out of habit, but an independent must secure personal support.

“The thing that works in favour of independents is if there is a perception that the sitting member is not good enough,” Green said.

High-profile seats always attract a “Melbourne Cup field” of candidates where the preference flows will count. But Tink and Spender are aiming for high primary votes for a decisive victory.  

Green said victory for an independent in North Sydney required them to attract enough Liberal votes to force the party under a primary vote of 50%.

“The independent then needs to outpoll the Labor and Green candidates,” he said. “If they can then attract strong flows of preferences from Labor and Green voters, the independent has a chance of passing the Liberal candidate on preferences. Few independents are high-profile enough to poll above 40% in their own right at their first run for a seat.”

But Tink, backed with a pink army of supporters (clad in Tink’s pink T-shirts) — and with backing from Simon Holmes à Court’s Climate 200 fund — has a good chance to poll more than 40%.

Her campaign team was greatly heartened by the huge swing against the Liberals in the byelection for the nearby state seat of Willoughby in February. 

She tweeted: “To those interested in the Willoughby byelection numbers yesterday: don’t just look. Listen. That’s the voices of people who want politics done differently we’re hearing.”

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