Package teal: The independent movement, three years on

In the 2022 election, a handful of well-funded independent candidates shattered the Liberal Party’s hold on wealthy inner-city electorates around the country. Three years later, the question was would the so-called teals would expand their reach or whether 2022 was a high-water mark.

The answer, much like the election itself, was nuanced and mixed.

Nearly two weeks after Labor’s landslide victory – marked by the Liberals’ worst result in decades and a diminished Greens – the teal movement’s performance defies easy categorisation.

It was all smiles in 2022 for the teals (from left): Kylea Tink, Zoe Daniel, Sophie Scamps, Monique Ryan, Kate Chaney and Allegra Spender.Credit: James Brickwood

Part of the challenge is the movement itself resists simple definition.

If measured solely by candidates funded through Simon Holmes à Court’s Climate 200 fundraising vehicle, the teals’ success rate dropped sharply: just seven of 35 supported candidates (all incumbents) won their seats this time – in 2022 11 of 23 succeeded.

But the story is more complex. High-profile independents like Zali Steggall and Senator David Pocock declined Climate 200 funding this time around yet comfortably retained their seats. Others, such as Andrew Wilkie, Helen Haines and Rebecca Sharkie, accept Climate 200 support but pre-date the teal wave and firmly reject the label.

Victoria was the only state where the teals lost ground. While Sydney-based independents generally enjoyed swings in their favour, Melbourne’s Monique Ryan and Zoe Daniel suffered swings against them, with Daniel likely to lose the seat of Goldstein.

And with Labor commanding a clear majority in the lower house – and able to achieve a workable majority with the Greens in the Senate — the teals will not hold the balance of power this term.

They remain, though, an existential headache for the Liberals. Their ability to peel away inner-city voters makes them a strategic nightmare for a party looking for a way back from a record thumping.

Cathy McGowan was an independent before the word ‘teal’ was applied to the movement.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

How the wave started

When the Coalition won the 2019 election with Scott Morrison as leader of the Liberal Party, the teal movement was just starting to sink its teeth into the party.

Teal (a mix of blue and green) was the colour of Zali Steggall’s 2019 campaign when she defeated Tony Abbott in Warringah with a mammoth primary vote swing of 13 per cent – taking the bluest of blue-ribbon Liberal territory from a former prime minister.

Before that, there was Cathy McGowan, the independent who defeated the Liberals’ Sophie Mirabella to take Indi in 2013 – a seat that had been held by conservatives since 1931. Indi has since been taken over by Helen Haines (who receives Climate 200 funding but uses the colour orange instead of teal).

By the 2022 election, though, the movement was no longer a nibbling at the edges but ripping out Liberal heartland electorates in Melbourne and Sydney: Kooyong, Goldstein, Mackellar, and Wentworth. The Liberals were blindsided by the scale and speed of the change.

The trend in teal candidates was clear: highly credentialed women from professional and civic backgrounds with environmental concerns who no longer identified with the right-lurching, male-dominated Coalition, which harboured climate-change deniers and consistently stalled meaningful climate action.

“The teals were really a backlash to the Coalition’s policies and the leaders in 2022,” says Dr Zareh Ghazarian, senior lecturer in politics and international relations at Monash University.

A number of issues dogged the Liberal government in its final term, including the Black Summer bushfires – during which Morrison was lambasted for leaving the country for a Hawaiian holiday. There was also the Brittany Higgins scandal and broader scrutiny of the parliamentary workplace culture, alongside intensifying demands for a national anti-corruption body driven by spending scandals like the “sports rorts” scheme – and later compounded by the fallout from the robo-debt scheme.

“We know climate change was really prominent, the issue of integrity, gender in Australian politics was also very important and prominent,” Ghazarian said.

The 2022 teal wave ousted prominent moderate Liberals – or “wets” – such as Tim Wilson, Josh Frydenberg and Jason Falinski, replacing them with independent women who, as Professor Mark Kenny, of the Australian Studies Institute at ANU notes, might once have belonged in the Liberal fold, but now reject it.

“The best example of that really is Kate Chaney in WA,” he says. “She’s the niece of Fred Chaney [former deputy leader of the Liberal Party] – a moderate. And Allegra Spender [daughter of John Spender – a shadow minister under Andrew Peacock and John Howard].

“And yet, these people are no longer in the Liberal Party because they have progressive social positions and more free-market traditional liberal economic positions.”

The 2025 verdict: mixed results

It was a very different context heading into the 2025 election, and the results for Climate 200–backed independents were a mixed bag. Most incumbents consolidated their hold; at least one fell to a resurgent Liberal Party. In a few electorates, challengers were competitive, finishing second, but in many, they struggled to make a dent.

This too in an election where Australians in record numbers parked their first preference vote somewhere other than the two major parties.

“On election day I said with headwinds, the movement would go back three seats, with tailwinds it would go forward three, four or five seats,” Holmes a Court told this masthead.

“And I think what happened is we got hit with a massive crosswind – which was Labor, or rather, a vote for the status quo over change.”

As the NSW Liberals watched Warringah, Wentworth, and Mackellar remain in teal hands, Bradfield stood out. Moderate Liberal Gisele Kapterian, a former trade lawyer, looks to have narrowly held the seat for the Liberals – the only glimmer for the party in NSW during an otherwise dismal election.

Although the seat is almost certainly headed for a recount, Kapterian looks likely to beat Climate 200-backed independent Nicolette Boele. Boele had campaigned as a “shadow MP” after nearly defeating Paul Fletcher in 2022.

She achieved a 3 per cent swing this time, but absentee and postal votes pushed Kapterian over the line – just in time for her to vote in Tuesday’s Liberal leadership ballot. (She backed Sussan Ley; Angus Taylor had opposed Kapterian’s preselection instead supporting Warren Mundine.)

Kapterian’s candidacy was hastily arranged with backing from former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian and former treasurer Joe Hockey. Her victory drew praise from party moderates. Senator and former NSW president of the party Maria Kovacic called it a signal the Liberals must reclaim the centre: “This isn’t just a win for Bradfield – it’s a step toward restoring centrist, credible politics.”

Elsewhere in Sydney, the teal line held firm. Sophie Scamps retained Mackellar with a swing, Zali Steggall held Warringah, and Allegra Spender stayed on in Wentworth. The only departing teal was Kylea Tink, whose North Sydney seat was abolished.

Victoria: Teal cracks show

The sole teal upset came in Victoria, with Zoe Daniel all but assumed to have lost Goldstein to former Liberal MP Tim Wilson in a dramatic rematch (although a recount is still on the cards). Daniel beat Wilson in 2022, but this time Wilson pulled ahead on postal votes after Daniel prematurely claimed victory on election night.

Celebrating too early? Zoe Daniel looking confident on election night.Credit: Penny Stephens

The margin in the see-sawing count narrowed again in recent days, but most observers predict Wilson will win – just.

His triumph was historic: the first Liberal to reclaim a seat from an independent, and the first to defeat a teal incumbent. He dubbed himself a “teal slayer” and borrowed from their campaign playbook – early corflutes, branded T-shirts, and “coffee swarms”.

While Daniel focused on national issues like climate policy and tax reform, Wilson zeroed in on hyper-local concerns around crime and planning, despite them being state matters. He also targeted Goldstein’s 10 per cent Jewish community, calling himself a Zionist and criticising Daniel’s support for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees.

Wilson’s win came despite being outspent by Daniel, who raised more than $1.8 million – including $570,000 from Climate 200 – and, like other incumbents, had the advantage of publicly funded office resources running into the hundreds of thousands.

Wilson said his $1 million campaign was partly self-funded, but he disclosed no donations pre-election, in line with the minimum requirements under federal rules.

Third-party groups – Australians for Prosperity, Better Australia, and Repeal the Teal – ran aggressive attack ads against Daniel. Two of these had direct Liberal links.

“The teals are not an unstoppable force,” Wilson said. “No matter how large their chequebook, it can be beaten by a strong Liberal heart and a courageous Liberal heart.”

Monique Ryan survived a tough battle in Kooyong after a redistribution added Liberal-leaning areas such as Toorak and Malvern from the abolished neighbouring electorate of Higgins. Her six-point 2022 victory over Josh Frydenberg was reduced to a slim margin – 50.6 per cent after preferences, or just 1400 votes as of Saturday – following a strong challenge from Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer.

Anticipating a tight race, Ryan’s team knocked on 55,000 doors and raised $1.1 million from 2683 donors (including $47,000 from Climate 200) since the start of the year. Hamer’s campaign cost around $1.5 million, according to a Liberal party spokesman.

Kenny noted that the Melbourne teals had a rougher ride than their Sydney counterparts due to a number of small but compounding factors: the unpopularity of the Allan Labor state government, local law and order issues in affluent suburbs, and less favourable boundary changes.

“So a lot of small things adding up to pretty difficult circumstances,” he said.

Monique Ryan held onto Kooyong, but her margin was eroded.Credit: Eddie Jim

Added to this was the sizeable Jewish population in both electorates – larger in Goldstein.

“There’s obviously quite a strong pro-Israel vote in Goldstein … so I think that’s probably not helped [Daniel], either. And given that we’re talking about such fine margins, you don’t need big shifts in any of these things for it to matter.”

Kenny and other analysts said while then-opposition leader Peter Dutton was not popular, the vitriol felt for him was not comparable to Scott Morrison in 2022 – most notably because Dutton was not prime minister.

Still, Dutton mostly stayed clear of teal seats, where he was seen as a liability.

“That anti-Dutton message doesn’t work quite as well … particularly as we got later in the campaign, and it became clear that he wasn’t going to win,” analyst Ben Raue, of The Tally Room blog and podcast, said.

“Dutton stayed away from these seats, he was no help there. If Tim Wilson gets re-elected [in Goldstein], it’s not thanks to him.”

Unlike Bradfield in NSW, the Liberal candidates in Goldstein and Kooyong also had long lead-in times – Wilson began campaigning almost as soon as he lost in 2022, while Hamer was preselected for Kooyong more than a year out from the election. Both candidates mounted strong ground games.

Beyond the city: High hopes, hard limits

Regional Victoria was also disappointing terrain for independent candidates hoping to make fresh inroads.

Helen Haines comfortably retained Indi with 58.5 per cent of the vote after a minuscule swing against her (-0.41 per cent), but no new Climate 200 candidates broke through.

Wannon, held by Liberal MPs (including former prime Minister Malcolm Fraser) since 1955, proved resilient to the teal pitch for a third time. Dan Tehan’s campaign, assisted by right-wing lobby Advance, framed Alex Dyson – a comedian and podcaster – as a “Green in disguise” and even a “clown”.

The result was a modest swing to Tehan, now a rising power in the diminished Coalition.

Alex Dyson (right) could not crack the rural seat of Wannon.Credit: Nicole Cleary

Touted contests in peri-urban Flinders, on the Mornington Peninsula, and regional Monash, covering parts of Gippsland, failed to fire, despite independent candidates snatching double-figure primary votes.

No inroads were made elsewhere in NSW: Berowra (won by Liberal Julian Leeser), Gilmore (Labor’s Fiona Phillips), Cowper (Nationals’ Pat Conaghan), Calare (National-turned-independent Andrew Gee), Lyne (Nationals’ Alison Penfold), Farrer (now Liberal leader Sussan Ley), or Riverina (Nationals’ Michael McCormack).

Kenny said regional seats were less susceptible to independent challengers unless they were former Nationals – like Andrew Gee or Bob Katter.

“The Nats have done quite well, and the reasons for that is that these country electorates, or regional electorates, tend to be very stable, population-wise,” he said.

“They tend to still reflect the somewhat older model of people being loyal to a particular party consistently and perhaps even intergenerationally.”

Climate 200-backed independents failed to take any of the six Queensland seats they contested – although Holmes à Court has said Ellie Smith, who ran in Dutton’s seat of Dickson, holds some responsibility for unseating the opposition leader by sending preferences to Labor’s Ali France.

Do the teals still matter? And to whom?

Holmes à Court said the election result was “a strong endorsement” for community independents and noted that independents had finished in the top two candidates in 22 electorates. He noted that 1 million Australians voted for an independent and that independents enjoyed the strongest swing, marginally ahead of Labor.

“But politics is brutal, right? There’s, there’s no silver medal,” he admitted.

Simon Holmes à Court called the 2025 election a good result for teals, but others aren’t so sure.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Psephologist Kevin Bonham was more blunt. He said the teals were “a side show”.

“The whole election was very heavily about what people thought of the Coalition and the influence of Trump making people wary of change,” he said.

“The sort of the issues that the teals campaign on were big things in 2022, and they’re just not the same deal any more to a lot of voters.”

Labor’s massive majority means it doesn’t need support from the independents to pass legislation and has a reliable Greens bloc in the Senate.

Kenny says the teals could still be influential in the political discussion.

“They’re articulate. They’re professional. It’s what differentiates them from a lot of the hacks that the major parties [field],” he said.

“Zali Steggall made this point very well. She’s not had the balance of power in either of the two last parliaments, but still been able to get quite a lot done in terms of legislation that she’s either sponsored or championed in one way or another, or made amendments to through negotiations.”

Zali Steggall speaking in parliament.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Perhaps where the teals remain most significant is in what their presence means for the Liberal Party. Of the 35 candidates backed by Climate 200, only five targeted Labor-held seats – in Bean, Fremantle, Franklin, Gilmore and Solomon – and all were unsuccessful. The movement’s greatest impact continues to be as a thorn in the side of the conservative party. However, Ghazarian noted that the mixed results for the teals signal volatility among voters.

“This result suggests that it’s still not conclusive about the longevity of the teals and that voters are still willing to go back or to support the Liberal Party if the candidate and the local campaign resonates with their preferences and with their aspirations,” he said.

Despite likely regaining Goldstein, the Liberal Party will remain in the political wilderness if it cannot win back the inner-city metropolitan seats it has lost to the teals, according to Kenny.

“[Liberal leader] Sussan Ley seems to be saying the right things now about steering the Liberal Party back to where the Australian people are – in other words, back to the mainstream centre,” he said.

“I think that represents some sort of recognition of what they’ve lost to the teals and to mainstream Australia, and therefore, by definition, you have to say it at least potentially presents a threat to the teals as well. Because the teals – that’s the ground they’re looking to occupy. But it’s also the ground, broadly speaking, that Albanese is looking to occupy as well.

“It’s pretty crowded territory, that middle ground – so if the Libs want back in there, they’re going to have to do so with more than rhetoric.”

Holmes à Court agreed. Even if the Liberals managed to put forward candidates that teal voters might, in theory, support, he argued the power of the movement now came from the social energy and sense of purpose surrounding it.

“One phrase I’ve heard many times over the last year is ‘active hope’,” he said.

“The first time I heard the phrase from a Sophie Scamps volunteer. The vollie explained, ‘I could stay home and throw the remote every time Dutton comes on the telly or yell at my husband how Murdoch is destroying democracy, but volunteering gives me hope and the satisfaction that I did something meaningful when it mattered’.”

“The Liberal Party would have to change quite dramatically to inspire Australians to join – let alone volunteer.”

With Alexandra Smith, Benjamin Preiss, Tony Wright

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