Voters aren’t just flirting with independents. It’s deep and meaningful now

How many people in your family or workplace make the decisions? Can everyone contribute their ideas and work together to make things better and fairer?

This is how a minority government works, and it is how the NSW parliament has operated for the past four years, under both Coalition and Labor governments.

More and more voters are seeing the benefits. Australians aren’t just flirting with independents any more. It’s much deeper.

Alex Greenwich speaks during the successful passage of the Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill in NSW Parliament House.Credit: AAP

I am one of three independents in the NSW lower house who have provided confidence and supply to both sides of politics, and have done so in the interest of stable government and good decision-making.

This federal election campaign, you’ll hear lots of scaremongering about so-called “secret deals with teals and Greens”.

You’ll also hear “hung parliaments” described as chaotic, confusing and ineffective.

You’ll hear these stories because the major parties prefer not to share power. They want to make all the decisions alone, but that’s not the best thing for outcomes or for democracy.

Power-sharing is a stabilising force that helps focus decision-making on evidence instead of party politics.

Here in NSW, we independents simply asked for a corruption-free, transparent, and well-administered government. In return, we got consultation and opportunities to work collaboratively to improve policies. That’s all, and it’s working well, and I have no reason to doubt the same can be replicated federally.

You’ll also hear both sides ruling out working with independents and minor parties. But the truth is, the moment the polls close our phones start ringing with people from the major parties who are “looking forward to working with us”.

When you drill down to most polling, you see this election isn’t a two-horse race, both major parties poll in the 30s in primary votes, with independents and minor parties polling around the same.

This means a third of Aussies want someone else, in addition to the major parties, contributing to decision-making.

If you don’t get a majority of seats, and you only got 30 per cent of the primary vote, it doesn’t feel right that you should then be able to govern entirely alone. You need to work with others. It’s common sense.

In NSW, the broad and diverse crossbench covers regional, metropolitan and suburban seats. While I’m representing inner Sydney, Dr Joe McGirr looks after the Riverina and Greg Piper does the same for Lake Macquarie. It is the same case federally. Non-major party voters are everywhere!

In NSW, here’s some of what we’ve achieved – uncontroversially – by having a seat at the table: fairer laws for renters; banning offshore oil and gas drilling; more essential worker housing; better consultation with regional communities on policies that affect them, and improved public transport options.

Every week in the NSW parliament the crossbench successfully amends legislation and does so with unanimous support.

Through the committee process, we also provide oversight of the bureaucracy and have the freedom to vote according to our conscience on every vote, something that continues to challenge the major parties.

This election will likely deliver a minority government. Power-sharing will be great for Australia: more ideas will be shared, more voices will be heard, and one person or a single party won’t be able to rush decisions or ignore the difficult ones.

Australia has moved beyond flirting with independents. It’s getting serious. That’s because voters have seen power-sharing delivers outcomes.

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