By Chas Underwood
This piece first appeared as a featured article in volume 95, issue three of Pelican. You can view our print archive here.
Kate Chaney is nearing two years as Member for Curtin in the House of Representatives. Her victory in the 2022 election broke a 24-year Liberal hold on the seat. I had a chat with her about policy, parties, politicians, Parliament, and even some things that did not start with “P”.
Chas Underwood: I thought we’d get started with a very broad question. What does it mean to you to be a teal independent?
Kate Chaney: It’s funny, the label “teal” was coined by the media four weeks before the election. I personally don’t mind identifying as a teal, because it’s a convenient shorthand, but, really, I think of it more as being a community independent.
I’d never been involved in politics before. Like most people, I looked at it and thought it looked pretty revolting. I lamented the fact that we seemed to be making poor long-term decisions because we were caught in this election cycle of the red team versus the blue team. Then I was asked to run and realized that you can’t sit around waiting for someone else to fix the problem. I had this really interesting experience of watching this community grow out of nothing – it was four months between when I said yes to the community group that asked me to run and the election. This community of 900 people grew over that time. It was very positive to realize I’m not the only one who thinks that we can do better – there is this groundswell of optimism. That’s what I found really energizing about it – it’s based on optimism and a sense that rather than lamenting, we can actually do something about it. Certainly, I had a lot of things in common in that journey with other community independents across the country who came from similar electorates. It’s been fantastic to meet this group of women. They’re, I think, for the right reasons, interested in positive pragmatic change.
CU: How far do you think that model can scale, in principle? What percentage of, say, the House of Representatives do you think could be represented by that sort of independent?
KC: The honest answer is I don’t know. Before I ran, I thought about “Is this good or bad for the country?” because I didn’t want to be involved in anything that was negative. I thought there were three directions it can head in. [One,] it forces the major parties to rethink their relationship to their communities and come back to a closer representation of their values. [Two,] it forces the parties to evolve. Parties split up, form and merge – they’ve evolved over the last 100 years. They could continue that evolution process. [Three,] we could have a larger crossbench. Many high-functioning democracies across the world do have a larger crossbench and form coalitions around different issues that take into account the interest of more people, rather than being a winner-takes-all model. I can’t see that having a negative impact if the people who are in that system are there for the right reasons, want a stable democracy, want sensible policy outcomes, and are willing to work pragmatically with either side. It’s actually a stabilising force in the democratic “swing” from one side to the other, rather than a destabilising force.
CU: You’re talking about the possibility of the major parties evolving and becoming better than what they are today. Your family, for instance, has a lot of heritage in the Liberal Party. Under the right circumstances, would you “go back” or do you think you’ll always be an independent?
KC: You say “back”, but there’s no “back” for me.
CU: Yeah, not for you.
KC: It’s a complete unknown. Right now, I don’t see anything particularly appealing in being a member of a party. I take my job as a representative very seriously. Because I’m not on some career path to a ministerial role, it means I can completely focus on the job I have now, rather than treating it as a waiting room for some other job in the future. When the legislature is actually focusing on legislation, that’s better for the country. Having said that, months before the election, I had no intention of going into politics. So you never know how things are going to turn out. “What’s good for the country” is ultimately my guiding principle. I’m open to working with anyone in the political sphere for better outcomes. Being flexible about that is a bit different to what we see in political careers generally.
CU: One of the talking points against you has been that if you were a party backbencher, you have more influence on the internal conversation and therefore on national policy, but you’ve come out and said, “actually, it’s the opposite”. As an independent, you’ve been able to have more influence.
KC: It seems like it. From the public’s perspective, we know that if one party says black, the other will say white – oppositional for the sake of it. If you’re on the crossbench and you’re assessing each issue on its merits when it comes up, it’s not always predictable – you’re not going to be oppositional for the sake of it. You have greater accountability, but also greater ability to follow where the evidence goes, not to be driven entirely by ideology or past, actually look at things on the facts. It feels weird to me to say this, because every parliamentarian should be doing that with every piece of legislation. But the reality is when I go into the House to vote, most of the time, most of the people in the major parties have no idea what they’re voting on. They go in and they walk to the side that they’re meant to go to. You might sit down and go, “oh, what what’s this one?” And they’re like, “I don’t know what it is”. It’s not their job. Obviously, they have other structures behind the scenes that consider policy, but I think there should be 151 people in there, agonising over every vote and looking at things on the merits. That’s the fundamental principle of how Parliament is meant to work.
CU: Certainly, like many people would hope it would.
KC: It’s a real surprise when you get there as a newcomer and you’re like, what? No one knows what they’re voting on. How could this be?
In terms of influence, democracy is slow and messy – that’s the reality of it. We still happen to think that it’s better than the other options. In every other area – I’ve worked in professional services, the corporate world, the non-profit world – you don’t make change by backing people into a corner publicly and shouting at them. You achieve change by working constructively with people individually, talking, and finding compromises. I see that as being part of my job now. Sometimes the best approach is to make noise in the media. Sometimes it’s actually to just go and meet with the minister and say, “well, have you thought about this problem” and “what about changing it like this”. You don’t always get credit, but that’s the job.
CU: Given this example you’ve set, do you expect that in the future we will see more backbenchers willing to go against their parties or even strike out as independents?
KC: I don’t think it would be a bad thing if people were prepared to actually vote the way they believe is right. Obviously, if you’re in a party and you agree with 100% of what they’re saying, then good for you, that’s fantastic. I’m glad I don’t face the moral dilemma of having to stand up and back a position that I don’t believe in. That’s probably one of the more challenging parts of politics. If the increased crossbench shows backbenchers they actually have the ability to have a voice, then that’s good for the country. It may be a bit messier, but mess is the price that we pay for better outcomes.
At the moment, we have this winner-takes-all approach where if you win government, you get to do all your things. If you lose government, you sit back and criticize everything for three years and wait for the next election to come around. I’m really surprised that the general vibe from the opposition is “we’re not going tell you what we think about things, we’re saving it for the next election”. rather than “let’s try to improve the legislation that we’re passing and work constructively”. It’s just a very oppositional approach, and it may have been like that in the last Parliament too. I don’t know. I’m new to it. The sense is it’s taking turns to be in control rather than working, as a Parliament, to pass the best legislation we can.
CU: Do you see that as a systemic problem where there’s bad incentives within the parliamentary system? Or it is a problem with the particular people who are in the major parties at the moment?
KC: I don’t blame individuals, I think it’s structural and it’s cultural. Probably if you’d spent your whole career in this world, it’s so normalised that you wouldn’t realise how weird it is. One of the great things about being there with a group of other women who’ve had other careers is that there is a reality check there where you say “do you think this is weird? I think this is pretty weird”. This wouldn’t work in any other context, you know. People would not shout at each other like this in a boardroom or even on a sports field. Having that reality check, and trying to retain some, I’ll call it “naivety”, is really important. The response is “this is just how it’s done”, and it doesn’t have to be how it’s done.
Structurally, I’ve been pushing for electoral reform. It sounds like a dry, boring topic, but it underpins every decision that we make, because it affects who our representatives are, who they feel obliged to, and how open and public that is. We don’t let Coles and Woolies make the laws about supermarket competition – but, effectively, the Liberal Party and the Labor Party make the laws about electoral competition. So it’s really important that we hold both sides to account on the rules of the game, so that they’re not stacking it to keep others out.
CU: We’ve started talking about policy a little bit, let’s get into that. What aspect of your policy and agenda have you become the most unexpectedly optimistic about since you’ve come to Canberra?
KC: The challenge is I started out with a lot of optimism because that really was what drove the campaign. Some of that optimism has been well founded, so that’s been fantastic. But there’s a difference between becoming more optimistic and maintaining an already high level of optimism.
On climate, there’s so much work to do still, because we’re talking about a huge shift of our entire economy and way of living. But we have made some good progress on that, and certainly, it looks very different to how it did three years ago. So, I maintain some optimism on that even though there is, of course, a huge amount of work to do.
On integrity, the anti-corruption commission was a really good first step there, holding governments and politicians to account and having some transparency. We’ve got some ground to make up in rebuilding trust in politicians.
Electoral reform, I think we will get some good improvements on transparency, possibly on banning lies and political ads, which is a hard but important thing to do. And, certainly, I think the pressure of the crossbench on those integrity issues is a significant factor in keeping them on the public agenda. No doubt it won’t be perfect, but I think we can make some strides in the right direction on that front.
CU: The crossbenchers recently proposed that draft bill [on truth in political advertising]. It lists the electoral commissioner as having certain powers to deal with lies in political advertising. But from the testimony I’ve seen, the commissioner’s been a bit reluctant. He says something like “We have a great reputation for being nonpartisan and we’d like to protect that”. Why give those powers to the commissioner as opposed to setting up a third-party unit, who could operate independently of the AEC [Australian Electoral Commission]?
KC: It’s a very good question. There is no perfect model, and I’m pretty agnostic about where that body sits. You want it to be a trusted body, you want it to be truly independent and not be accused of, you know, being the Ministry of Truth. The South Australian Electoral Commission has played this role for 20 years. They have had truth in advertising laws for 20 years, and the world has not ended. They’re still a trusted entity. There is a model there that works, that has a track record. You need to set it up as being separate to the other part of the AEC; there are ways you could structure it.
There are other ways you could do it. ACMA [Australian Communications and Media Authority] could do it; a separate independent body could do it. Although that’s a hard problem to solve, it’s better to be solving that hard problem than to throw your hands in the air and say, “Oh, well, we’ll just let everyone tell lies”. Because at the moment, if you run a business, you’re not allowed to tell lies about your product. If you’re running a political campaign, you can say something that is factually wrong and it could change the outcome of an election, and there’s absolutely no recourse. Especially as the risks of misinformation and disinformation grow with the role social media plays, solving the problem of who decides is a lesser evil than not addressing the issue.
CU: The logic is “Let’s just take the model that’s worked at state level and see whether that could happen nationally”.
KC: That’s right. I understand why the AEC would be reluctant to take on that role. And it would definitely need to be resourced appropriately and quite differently to play that role both with expertise and capability, so it can do that in a timely way. But as a society, we can solve this problem. We have a legal system that’s been determining matters of fact for a long time. Now it’s too slow for this purpose, but we should be able to design something and continue to improve it. People would never be entirely happy with the outcome. Some will say it goes too far, others will say it doesn’t go far enough. It would have to take a fairly conservative approach. But even if it just makes politicians think twice about telling things that can be proven to be factually wrong, that’s got to be better than where we are now.
CU: A fun question as we’re going towards the end: you can pick anyone, living or dead, to lead the major parties, back to their former glory. It can’t be a relative. Who do you pick?
KC: To lead the major parties back.
CU: Yeah. Maybe you can pick two. One for Labor, one for the Coalition.
KC: Oh, I don’t know. I’d probably pick non-politicians. That’s a really hard question. This morning, actually, as I was waking up, I’ve just been listening to Amartya Sen on the capabilities approach. I reckon put putting some philosophers in there would be not a bad idea. So, Amartya Sen’s one of them. Who else would I pick? The real challenge is, I think a country should be led by people who are interested in society rather than politics. How about Fiona Stanley? I’m going to put Fiona Stanley. And then maybe Martha Nussbaum on the other side.
CU: We can have three.
KC: That’s probably not a very well-considered answer. The underlying principle behind my answer is the country should be led by people who are more interested in policy than politics.
CU: Well, very intriguing. That was all my questions, Kate. Thank you again for making the time for Pelican.
KC: Great to chat to you, Chas. Cheers.