Intense anti-Scott Morrison sentiment and frustration with Coalition inaction on climate change, integrity and the treatment of women fuelled the teal wave that crashed through Liberal heartland at the 2022 federal election.
Now with Morrison gone, Labor in power and cost of living the most pressing issue in the electorate, the independents confront a very different political landscape.
Byron Fay, the executive director of the Climate 200 fundraising vehicle that backs the campaigns, acknowledges the “headwinds” facing independents in 2025.
But Fay insists there are “tailwinds”, too – a set of factors fuelling optimism that the movement might not only retain but expand its presence in Canberra.
The first, he says, is the track record of the incumbents: the performance of teals Zali Steggall, Allegra Spender, Zoe Daniel, Kylea Tink, Sophie Scamps, Kate Chaney, Monique Ryan and other crossbenchers like Andrew Wilkie, Rebekha Sharkie, Helen Haines and David Pocock.
Allegra Spender, centre, speaks with fellow teals Sophie Scamps, left, and Kate Chaney in parliament. Climate 200 research suggests the Coalition is at risk of losing more ground to independents at this year’s election. Photograph: Mike Bowers/The Guardian
The second is the ongoing erosion in the major party vote, a decades-long trend now approaching a tipping point that would redefine the political system in Australia.
“People are not liking what they’re seeing from the duopoly and as a result the major party vote is in systemic decline,” Fay says.
Climate 200 raised $13m ahead of the 2022 election, which was funnelled to 23 candidates, 11 of which won a seat.
Guardian Australia can reveal the organisation has so far raised $7.6m to fight the 2025 campaign, up from $6.5m at roughly the same time three years ago.
The group – helmed by polarising convenor Simon Holmes à Court, the renewable energy investor – wants to surpass the amount raised in 2022 to support up to 30 candidates, including the incumbents.
Chaney (a combined $220,625), Daniel ($220,000) and Spender ($169,00) have received sizeable Climate 200 donations in the past 12 months, according to figures proactively disclosed on their personal websites.
Climate 200 is again targeting Peter Dutton’s Coalition even though it’s now in opposition. An initial teal list of 22 seats features just one Labor-held electorate: the seat of Bean in Canberra’s southern suburbs.
Teal strategists believe a major party incumbent is vulnerable if their primary vote drops to near or below 40% in a head-to-head contest with an independent.
In 2022, Ryan won the prized seat of Kooyong after the former treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s primary vote collapsed below 43%.
The Liberal primary vote fell to around 41% in Curtin, Wentworth, Goldstein and MacKellar, and 38% in North Sydney, enough to turn the once-safe seats from blue to teal.
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Internal Climate 200 research, conducted between March and December last year, suggests the Coalition is in danger of losing more ground to independents with its primary vote at or below the 40% threshold in several of the target seats.
Teal challenger Nicolette Boele is considered an even stronger chance in Bradfield after the retirement of Liberal Paul Fletcher, who defeated her in 2022.
The internal polling shows the Liberal vote in the north Sydney seat dropping from 45% to 43%.
Indigenous businessman Warren Mundine, a key figure in the no campaign in the voice to parliament referendum, is among the contenders for Liberal preselection in the seat.
The Coalition primary vote is at 42% in Cowper on the New South Wales mid-north coast and in McPherson on the Gold Coast.
It is at 40% in Flinders on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, and 38% in both Forrest – around Margaret River in Western Australia – and Casey in Melbourne’s outer east.
Worryingly for the Liberals, its primary vote in Sturt in Adelaide’s eastern suburbs is sitting at just 36%.
The Coalition primary in the regional NSW seat of Calare (33%) and Monash on Melbourne’s far eastern fringe (26%) is even lower.
Independent candidate Deb Leonard, centre, thinks she had a ‘good shot at winning’ the Victorian seat of Monash this year. Photograph: Supplied by Deb Leonard
The numbers are particularly fragmented in those seats because the polling assumes three-cornered contests in which National-turned-independent Andrew Gee runs against his former party in Calare and dis-endorsed Liberal Russell Broadbent attempts to hold Monash as an independent.
Fay says history has shown it takes two election cycles for an independent to break through, with the first contest helping to “soften the turf” with the electorate for a successful second run.
Lawyer and small business owner Deb Leonard contested Monash as an independent in 2022, attracting 10% of the vote despite a last-minute campaign and no Climate 200 cash.
With a longer run-up and Climate 200’s backing, she believes she’s a “good shot of winning”.
“The last time around we were building the plane as we were flying it,” she says.
“This time we’ve built the plane. We know how to fly it. We know where it needs to get to. We know the destination.”
While Dutton’s policies and campaign messaging are primarily targeted at outer suburban electorates, Liberals insist the party is not abandoning its traditional heartland.
Liberal sources nominate Goldstein, where former MP Tim Wilson wants to reclaim his old seat, and Curtin, where former Uber executive Tom White is up against Chaney, as the two electorates most likely to return to the Coalition.
Voters in Goldstein at the 2022 election, in which the Melbourne seat’s Liberal primary vote fell to about 41%. Photograph: Diego Fedele/AAP
Unlike in 2022, where a similar anti-Morrison sentiment defined each of the contests, Liberals expect the teal battles to be more localised in 2025.
For example, Goldstein and Wentworth are home to large Jewish communities, meaning the outbreaks of antisemitism in Australia – and the perception of the Albanese government’s response to them – could influence the outcome.
The Liberals have intensified their attacks on the teals and Climate 200 as the election nears, with Fletcher labelling the movement a “giant green left con job” in a December speech to the Sydney Institute.
The deputy opposition leader, Sussan Ley, says the teals have not delivered on their vow to change politics in Canberra.
“These teal independents said they would change Canberra, but three years on it is clear Canberra has changed them, and Australians have seen that,” she says.
“They said they would hold the government accountable, instead they spend most of their time opposing the opposition.”
With the potential for the teals to be kingmakers in a minority government, the independents are resisting Coalition pressure to declare which party they would support in a hung parliament.
Sharkie – who doesn’t align herself with the teals – has been the most upfront about her intentions, saying voters in her traditionally conservative Adelaide Hills seat of Mayo would expect her to negotiate first with the Coalition.
Wilkie has ruled out signing formal deals with either party after he was stung by then prime minister Julia Gillard’s broken promise on poker machine reform in the last hung parliament.
Kos Samaras, a director at research firm Redbridge, believes one or two teal seats could switch but says Dutton’s outer-suburban strategy will make it hard to win back the “small-l Liberals” who abandoned the party in 2022.
Sentiment against Scott Morrison pervaded the 2022 election but Liberals expect the teal battles to be more localised in 2025. Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP
But the former Labor strategist says Labor and the Coalition face a more existential problem: a growing disillusionment among voters with the major party establishment.
“The response to Morrison [in 2022] from parts of the electorate was not necessarily about him as an individual, but what he represented,” Samaras says.
“What he represented is a sentiment within the broader electorate that the major parties are not serious about addressing some of our significant existential problems now.”
Asked what, if anything, could be done to reverse that perception, Samaras says Labor and the Coalition would need to “depart from their usual diet of the politics of incrementalism” on issues such as tax reform and housing policy.
“But the majors find themselves in a fairly sticky situation because whoever pops their head up above the parapet on these issues will get knocked off by vested interest groups.”
