Independents v the media: somehow it’s always about the men

Like most of us, the political media doesn’t deal with change particularly well. The comfort zone for political journalists is a two-party system; despite generations of smaller parties and independents wielding significant influence in the Senate, the idea of minority governments is still portrayed as a kind of political disaster. Lower house independents are regarded as colourful eccentrics, such as Bob Katter, or political mistakes that are the product of failure by the major parties, traditionally assumed to be entitled to dominate the chamber.

The coverage of the most important aspect of this election, the challenge of an array of centrist independents — all female — to Coalition MPs, reflects the media’s struggle with change. At ease with small, siloed but professionalised major parties and narratives based around personality, political journalists have visibly struggled with grassroots movements dedicated to political change and the candidates that have sought to represent them.

Confusion has abounded over the disparate Voices Of movements across different electorates, with journalists often assuming it’s a sort of monolithic, unified movement when it is nothing of the sort. Contrary to the assumptions of many political journalists, some Voices Of groups don’t even endorse the high-profile independent standing in their seats. The assumption of journalists is that Voices Of groups must be a type of political party, because they’re used to only thinking in terms of political parties, and it’s usually a good rule of thumb for politics. In this case, it happens to be badly wrong.

Two versions of that thinking have been on display this week: one risible, the other more serious. The otiose Alexander Downer, still doing his spot-on Boy Mulcaster impersonation after all these years, this week termed “so-called” independents as “little more than the most loathsome example of pork-barrel gangsters”, which is a fine jape given the Morrison government’s world championship title for rorting. But Downer goes on to argue that these female independents are standing in the way of “great men”.

Take Josh Frydenberg in Kooyong and Dave Sharma in Wentworth. These are people who could become truly great men. But if the independents defeat them those independents will be totally forgotten in 10 years’ time.

Putting aside that Downer’s two former staffers Frydenberg and Sharma would have to die and be born again to have a chance of becoming great, he evidently believes only Liberals — and, he might graciously allow, Nationals and Labor — should be allowed to stand for office, which is apt for a man who belongs in the Tory party of Stanley Baldwin. The unsubtle implication is also that the best contribution the likes of Helen Haines and Zali Steggall and Zoe Daniel and Kylea Tink and Allegra Spender could make is to get out of the way and let the blokes get on with it.

Different from, but not unrelated to, Downer’s stupidity is the perspective of David Crowe for Nine newspapers. Crowe understands the significance of the independents, beginning his column yesterday with “the old ways of Australian politics are about to be tested”. But the urge to turn everything into a party-like monolith was too strong for Crowe, who says “the unifying thread at this election is the funding from a different activist group, Climate 200, and its leader, Simon Holmes à Court, one of the most relentless opponents of the government’s climate policy”.

Again it’s not about female independent candidates, it’s about a man — the agency of the candidates, and of the movements they have emerged from with their thousands of participants, falls away in the shadow of Simon Holmes à Court, who, if not pulling their strings, is the string connecting them.

Crowe argues that, if successful, independents “will sweep moderate Liberals out of Parliament while leaving conservatives untouched. The Liberal Party room would shift to the right.” That is, the upsurge of communities against business-as-usual politics should be seen through the prism not of those communities but through the hollowed-out major party it will affect.

In any event, that analysis is wrong and self-defeating. The independents exist because the Liberals long ago shifted to the right. The Liberals are the party of fossil fuels, which provide finance and staff for it. Fossil fuel companies have captured much of the apparatus of the Australian state, including the Coalition and much of the ALP. That’s why independents have emerged, to challenge this state capture. Minus the “moderates”, the Liberals would be exactly the same, just without Dave Sharma regularly backgrounding The Sydney Morning Herald about how unhappy he is to be rolling over yet again to the denialists.

Political parties are not the purpose of politics. They are not the prism through which politics should be understood or assessed. But when you spend too long in Canberra, you can end up incapable of seeing the world any other way.