North Sydney’s new independent federal MP Kylea Tink woke up on election day feeling victorious before a single vote was cast.
“We’d already won because we had fundamentally changed the conversation,” Ms Tink told reporters in Kirribilli on Monday.
Despite never thinking she would win the formerly safe Liberal seat, as her coral-coloured chorus of supporters like to sing: “Kylea’s going to Canberra.”
She got there with a grassroots campaign supported by 1000-plus volunteers, ousting Trent Zimmerman, who’s primary vote dived 12.4 per cent.
She said he was a good local member, but was let down by the coalition government.
“Voters switched because of the current state of politics in Australia; a two-party system which is gridlocked where neither party seems to be really listening to the people,” Ms Tink said.
The campaign was not about her, but about the community in North Sydney wanting to be heard in the capital, she says.
Ms Tink is one of several professionally accomplished, independent women who secured a seat on Saturday beating a major party candidate.
It’s a similar story for Dai Le in Fowler, where the independent toppled Labor’s Kristina Keneally after the former NSW premier and federal senator was parachuted into the seat.
Zali Steggall, who led a community-backed campaign that took former Liberal prime minister Tony Abbott’s seat of Warringah in 2019, retained it with an increased margin on Saturday.
And the seat of Mackellar, on Sydney’s northern beaches, fell for the Liberal to Sophie Scamps – who also ran a community campaign on climate, integrity and gender equity.
It was the same in Sydney’s east, where Allegra Spender took the seat of Wentworth from a Liberal MP.
The wave of women independents in NSW and other states have been labelled the “teal independents” – although the colour doesn’t feature in all of their campaigns, and they didn’t all receive funding from Simon Holmes a Court’s Climate 200 group.
“I’m not sure how I became known as teal,” Ms Tink said.
“A better description would be ‘community independent’, because that’s what we have in common.”
What they also have is a similar desire for greater action on climate change and to boost integrity in federal politics.
“What we are hoping to be able to do is to reset the House of Parliament so that fundamentally important decisions about how we move forward as a nation around climate are addressed in a non-political fashion,” Ms Tink said.
First preference votes for both major parties went backwards on Saturday.
Matt Kean, the NSW treasurer and a leading moderate in the state Liberals, says the party needs to rebuild by listening to the community on issues such as climate, integrity and women.
Former defence minister Peter Dutton is being touted as the frontrunner to replace Scott Morrison as the federal Liberal leader, but Mr Kean declined to nominate who was the best candidate.
“But what I will say is that we need a leader who is going to be able to set a new path for the Liberal Party,” Mr Kean told ABC TV on Monday.
He said no one person was to blame for the defeat but the federal Liberals needed to take ownership of the result and improve on their target to deliver net zero emissions by 2050.
“I think that we need to have a strong and decisive 2030 target,” Mr Kean said.
Last year, the NSW coalition government announced its goal to slash emissions by 50 per cent by 2030 on its way to zero emissions by 2050.
NSW and Tasmania remain the only Australian states or territories with the Liberals in power.
