Zoe and Zali fire up a lost democratic zeal in Australia’s most marginal seat

They arrived with hope in their hearts but with fear in their eyes, all 18 still carrying the scars of 2019. Might the night bring the healing they needed?

Answer: yes. And much more. A lesson that maybe, just maybe, decency can prevail.

The 18 came together in Australia’s most marginal seat, Macquarie, covering the Blue Mountains west of Sydney. In 2019 the night had soured early. It took two weeks before the ALP’s Susan Templeman was declared the winner by a mere 371 votes by way of a late footnote and a small consolation.

The electorate is a mixed bag, to put it mildly. Retirees. Small business. Tree changers. Young couples and families. And more than a fair share of tin-foil-hat wearers wary of 5G networks and secret cloud seeding activity by the government.

The night, hosted by a climate change investor, was the closest thing you might find to a teal independent gathering away from the coast. As a condition of entry, guests were asked to project how the night would end. “Afraid,” wrote one. “Better than the last one!” offered another. The consensus was a Labor win, either in its own right or in a minority government with teals and Greens.

Most had lived through the rise and fall and ultimate crash of progressive politics, dating back decades — a life experience that meant you factored in the likelihood of dashed hopes and disappointment. How did we get here, with a flim-flam merchant as prime minister praying by the side of his bed at night and looking for divine signs in paintings of eagles? How was it possible to move so far from the excitement of a 1972 Whitlam agenda and end up with Mumbles as opposition leader, barely able to explain a policy without confusing people?

The age of inspiration politics might be dead as far as Labor and the Coalition are concerned. For those hungry for passion in politics, the “It’s time” spirit could now only come from the Zalis and the Zoes — the community independents here to resuscitate a moribund politics: a public discourse now so debased that on the day of the election, the prime minister would pull out a boat arrival scare from the playbook of 2013. 

There was an early sign that redemption was on the way. By 8.05pm, with the Coalition vote plunging across the eastern states, it became apparent that whatever else happened Scott Morrison’s time was up. On that the room was, deliriously, unanimous.

His future? There was the helpful suggestion that Hillsong was “looking for someone”. Yep. The symmetrical fall of Australia’s religious power couple — music to the ears of believers in democracy who wanted an end to this deliberate blurring of Liberal politics and extreme religion.

It was the election of the teals that kept bringing the biggest cheers. Climate change. Integrity. Equality. How did such straightforward ideas become so revolutionary? Yet somewhere along the line that’s exactly what had happened. Decency had left politics, accelerated by Abbott and brought to its ultimate conclusion by Morrison.

Here is one sign for me. The Liberal Party strategist offering comment on the ABC’s panel last night was Tony Barry, a staffer for Victorian Opposition Leader Matthew Guy’s time in that job and former federal opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull, and an operative who once lobbied for big tobacco. The same Barry had also been appointed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal during Morrison’s tenure, although this went completely unremarked.

By the end of the night, there wasn’t a scintilla of doubt about Templeman’s fate. No torturous wait this time. Templeman swamped her Liberal opponent with a swing to the ALP of 7.5% and at last count was 12,000 votes ahead. It was a further, unheralded confirmation of how comprehensively Morrison had ground his own party into the dirt.

Unlike 1972, there was no frisson about the election of Anthony Albanese — 50 years on, the best thing you could say about Labor’s leader was that he was not Morrison.

The excitement about the future for those in this Blue Mountains room lay elsewhere, with the new disruptors of democracy.