Enough empty promises; the teals aim to deliver

Independent candidate for Goldstein Zoe Daniel. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Brendan Beckett

For days now, Australians have been lectured by Scott Morrison and others in the Coalition on how we are doing democracy wrong. Want action on climate change that stamps out wiggle room? The Liberal Party says that’s anti-democratic. Want a federal integrity commission? That’s public autocracy, according to the Prime Minister.

Yet the public wants action on both fronts. That’s democracy. That’s what the voters want, but the Coalition will not listen and will not act.

The public has been sadly disappointed by the Coalition’s empty promises. Survey after survey reveals strong support for climate action.

Griffith University’s respected climate action survey shows an astonishing 87 per cent of respondents think climate change must be a government priority. It’s the same with the Ipsos poll. Australians are deeply concerned about the impacts of rising temperatures and rising sea levels.

And survey after survey reveals strong support for an effective federal integrity commission. Resolve Political Monitor’s polling shows seven in 10 Australians want a powerful anti-corruption watchdog. Essential polling was even higher at 80 per cent.

The Prime Minister promised he would act. He committed to a federal integrity commission in 2018. It never happened. Now, of course, he speaks of integrity commissions as kangaroo courts.

Had he delivered, or had Liberal incumbents stood up and been counted, perhaps they would not now find themselves in “new marginal” seats, under challenge from community independent candidates who seek to genuinely represent their electorates. And frankly, had the two-party system delivered I wouldn’t be standing as one of those independents. I wouldn’t need to.

If politicians had not lazily slipped into spending our money for political benefit rather than public good, voters would not be demanding a federal integrity commission.

If the major parties changed their behaviour for the better they would have nothing to fear and the voters would applaud.

Now the Prime Minister is so anxious that any such commission would actually find corruption, he’s promoting a model that couldn’t find water in a flood zone. Any promises he made about net zero by 2050 have been invalidated by the wiggle room imposed by Matt Canavan and other Nation­als.

The so-called importance of women’s issues, hardly hot-button in 2019 but scorching hot now, were put on the backburner when the Coalition said it would accept the recommendations of Australian Human Rights Commission Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins’s Respect@Work report on sexual harassment in the workplace.

Accept does not mean what we think it means. It does not mean, for example, that the government will do anything. As of this week, only a handful of those recommendations have been implemented and the most important, a positive duty on employers to provide a safe workplace, has been parked.

This is why, according to opinion polls across the nation, the electorate looks set to turn to other options, and looks set to take a chance on politicians who might actually keep their word.

No so-called teal candidate is trying to unravel Australian democracy.

Speaking for myself, this whole exercise is to do with listening to what people actually want and acting on that. That means taking the kind of action on climate change Australians have been promised for years. As independent MP Zali Steggall wrote on this page last week, we need a climate commission.

It would not take power out of the hands of politicians, merely keep them up to the mark. If they want to change legislated targets, let them – and let them face the electoral consequences.

Similar organisations already exist, for example, the AHRC. My opponent in Goldstein should be familiar with that model, given his stint there for two years before his election to parliament. The AHRC is an independent statutory organisation, established by an act of federal parliament. It is a source of brilliant research across a range of relevant areas and an extraordinary resource, sadly ignored by the current government.

Imagine what a similar climate rights commission might offer.

I want to be a politician who keeps her word to the voters. That’s what the voters are demonstrating they want. That’s why I’m standing.

That’s real democracy.

Zoe Daniel is the independent candidate for the seat of Goldstein in Melbourne.