Country independents join their city cousins on the march to Canberra

A well-heeled, middle-aged crowd of about 40 people is gathered in the pavilion of the Lowe Family Wine Co, a handful of kilometres outside Mudgee in the NSW central west.

Armed with glasses of the house wines and tucking into trays of house-made quiche, dips and sausage rolls, they are here to meet — and hear from — Kate Hook, one of more than half a dozen well-organised independents challenging sitting rural Coalition members, mainly Nationals, on May 21.

It is Sunday evening. The 48-year-old mother of four is fresh from fronting a candidates’ forum for the federal division of Calare at the local Uniting Church, where more than 100 people had a no-show from the sitting member, Nationals’ Andrew Gee, who has represented the seat since 2016.

Gee is also being challenged by Labor, One Nation and the United Australia Party.

Hook has had a diverse career spanning marketing human resources, medical practice and clean energy. She decided to give politics a tilt when the “Voices of” movement emerged in the year after the 2019 election.

These community-based movements are unique to each electorate but share a common goal of wanting to “do politics differently”. There’s a strong focus on listening to local concerns at “kitchen table”, fireside and pub get-togethers. From those meetings, candidates are picked.

Like the city-based “teal” independents, a better government response to climate change is front and centre of their policy platform. Hook says her campaign received $50,000 from the crowd-funded Climate200 group led by Simon Holmes à Court.

“It was effectively seed money that got us a first run of T-shirts, a first run of corflutes and some office rent,” she says. Other than Climate200 money, the campaign relies on small — and a handful of larger — donations. Funding is something of a struggle.

Country electorates are tough work, especially for independents who don’t have resources from head office to rely on for policy brochures and staff. “All my staff are volunteers,” Hook says.

The travel is punishing. Calare’s 118,000 electors are spread over 32,666 square kilometres, and the division is more than 200 kilometres end to end. It’s home to three major regional cities — Lithgow, Orange and Bathurst — and the substantial centres of Mudgee, Wellington and Blayney. Lithgow and Mudgee are coal-mining centres, but it also covers the tourist destination of Orange — as well as vast swaths of agricultural land.

Having been in Bathurst more than an hour away earlier in the day, Hook is leaving the event well after its 7.30pm finish time to be in Orange — more than two hours’ drive away — for the 5am Anzac dawn service.

The playbook for Hook, and her fellow independents, is one worked up by Cathy McGowan, who successfully wrested the Victorian county seat of Indi from Liberal Sophie Mirabella in 2013. After holding the seat for two terms, McGowan oversaw a successful succession to Helen Haines, another independent, who has been the main driver in Canberra for a federal anti-corruption commission.

Indeed, McGowan’s book Cathy Goes to Canberra, and one by her sister Ruth titled Get Elected, lays out what’s needed by independents to take a good shot at office.

McGowan has also been touring regional seats like Calare with journalist and former ABC presenter Kerry O’Brien, supporting independent candidates with well-attended “democracy” forums.

As well as Hook, there are strong, climate-minded independent challengers down the eastern seaboard, including Suzie Holt in the south-west Queensland seat of Groom, Hanabeth Luke in the NSW northern rivers seat of Page, Caz Heise in Cowper on the NSW mid-north coast, Penny Ackery in Angus Taylor’s southern NSW seat Hume, and a rare male independent Rob Priestly in the Victorian seat of Nicholls centred around Shepparton.

Another former federal independent MP, Tony Windsor, who held the seat of New England from 2001 to 2013 and was one of the three crossbenchers who supported Julia Gillard’s minority Labor government from 2010-13, is supporting both regional and city independents personally and through his involvement with Climate200.

Windsor says that although he believed many of the city independents have better chances of winning, some regional hopefuls have a chance. This is especially true because, as Hook has found, many traditional Nationals voters believe the party has deserted them for the mining sector, something conceded by leading Queensland National Matt Canavan last year.

The other demographic Hook is finding supportive are women: “Women want to see more women in Parliament,” she says. Farmers who want stronger action on climate change, and new, younger voters, are also warm to a country independent.

The need for more integrity and less corruption in federal politics has been a strong message, both Hook and Windsor say, and she backs Haines’ federal integrity commission model.

Other concerns raised by voters at Lowe’s winery are education, the city/regional health disparity that plagues rural Australia, immigration to feed the need for workers in agriculture and hospitality, and aged care. One of the most thorny issues discussed was the path from coal to renewables, all the more important for a town like Mudgee that Lowe’s proprietor, David Lowe, describes as being “hooked on coal”.

There is a real sense among attendees of dissatisfaction with both major parties, a theme echoed in a Crikey straw poll of Mudgee locals at Kelly’s Irish Pub earlier in the weekend.

Gee’s primary vote fell 9% in 2019, but he did have 47% of the vote. Hook’s chances received a boost last week. The Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party elected not to contest a seat where it has a state MP in the smaller division of Orange and scored 17% in the 2019 poll without much effort. Hook also grabbed top spot on the ballot.

To have a chance at winning, Hook and other independents have to beat Labor into second place — or other Coalition candidates in Priestly’s case — and get a strong preference flow from minor parties.

Windsor sees as key the preference decision of Clive Palmer’s United Australia Party, another drawcard for the disaffected.

“They are all facing big margins to overcome,” he says. ”But even if they do not win this time they will make the seats marginal and this will bring fresh pressure on the Nationals.”

One way or another, the party looks like it will be held to account in its heartland.