I’m often asked, why did I ever join the Liberal Party? It was 10 years ago, one year before my election in a seat that the Victorian branch had called unwinnable and didn’t much care about.

The irony behind my answer is that the party was calling for more women. I felt aligned with their values and those of good leaders such as Malcolm Turnbull, Julie Bishop and Kelly O’Dwyer.

I was preselected in one of the most multicultural seats in the country. Chisholm was to be the only seat the party won from Labor in 2016 – it had been in their hands for more than 18 years. It was an electorate in which I had lived and worked, with strong family and community ties. At the time of my preselection, I lived in my family home only a few kilometres from the nearest boundary, which was then the seat of Higgins.

At my first meeting as the candidate, a local branch official aggressively demanded that I rent a small apartment in Chisholm to “pretend I live there”, and stay with my family a few nights a week. Momentarily stunned by the directive, I said, “I’m not going to start my political career on a lie.” His response was blunt: I was a “useless candidate” and, more pointedly, “You’ll be a fucking hopeless MP if you can’t lie”.

I quit the party a few months after Turnbull was ousted as prime minister. The key message in my resignation speech was that my values hadn’t changed – the Liberal Party’s had.

I served as an independent after that, as did Kerryn Phelps, elected in Wentworth, and our advocacy focused on climate, humanitarian issues and equality. It’s no coincidence that Julie Bishop and Kelly O’Dwyer also left the Liberal Party before Scott Morrison’s “miracle” win in 2019; the same year Zali Steggall won Tony Abbott’s former seat of Warringah. Nor is it a coincidence that Climate 200 was on the rise.

The seismic shift in 2022 that saw community independents take “blue ribbon” urban seats in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth would never have happened were it not for  the leadership coup against Turnbull in 2018,  coupled with the party’s sharp pull to the right and departure from its core values, led by Morrison, and then Peter Dutton. The independents campaigned on a promise to replace what was lost: integrity, connection with the community and genuine commitment to its concerns.

Turnbull and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – though from opposite sides of politics – share key values: integrity, equality and an embrace of diversity. I’ve worked with both men during my time in parliament. They are decent men, and avowed feminists, who share a deep optimism for multiculturalism and the future of our country. When images emerged of Albanese warmly engaging with Chinese–Australian constituents in Chisholm during this campaign, the energy and authenticity was almost palpable. It reminded me of the atmosphere in Turnbull’s visits to Chisholm, when I was the local member, and his tour of Box Hill Central, where he received a rockstar welcome. It was the same during our walk through Melbourne’s CBD at Lunar New Year – the organiser said it was the first time in history a Liberal prime minister had done so. When Turnbull visited Oakleigh – where my brother and my uncle had been local GPs for decades and my mum had worked as a receptionist – the Greek community spilled out of the shops. The small-business owners gathered in the mall with an exuberant welcome that was full of warmth and emotion.

Integrity is about respect for the community you represent … Having galvanised their local communities, the independents are more truly representative of them. And together, they could be a greater force to be reckoned with. A Community Independents Party wouldn’t be a contradiction.

The contrast could not have been starker with the Morrison and Dutton show, and wingmen such as Dutton’s now-ousted MP Michael Sukkar. At the time of Turnbull’s defeat, this right wing of the party was emboldened by Trump 1.0.

We all know how Trump’s second coming played out for the Liberals. At this election, they preferenced One Nation and Family First ahead of Labor in 139 seats across the country, including blue-ribbon urban seats. These are parties with longstanding positions against LGBTQIA+ rights, abortion and renewable energy, which survive on an underbelly of division and racism. It’s hard to watch some Liberal candidates and MPs stumble and obfuscate when journalists ask how they reconcile this.

During my term, whenever there was talk from the right wing about the  possibility of the party preferencing One Nation or Family First, a corresponding number of centrist MPs would vehemently agree that this should never happen as it would completely contradict the party’s values. It’s obviously a different story now.

The 2025 election has shown clearly that the Liberal Party is well on track to becoming a fringe right-wing party, increasingly irrelevant and out of step with Australian values. Their Trumpian slogan “Let’s get Australia back on track” now looks absurd. Their continued nostalgic reference to the Liberal Party being the “party of Menzies”, which some journalists continually echo, is meaningless and hollow.

Menzies founded the Liberal Party to represent the “forgotten people” – salaried workers, professionals, small-business owners – as well as to “reward effort” and to uphold the right to individual achievement. Three elections after pushing out Turnbull, the Liberals have forgotten young people, the Millennials and Gen Z who care deeply about climate, integrity and diligent economic management. The party’s leaders have barely concealed a disdain of sections of our multicultural community, such as the Chinese diaspora, most of whom, like my parents and maternal grandparents of migrant heritage, were included among Menzies’ “forgotten people”.

The party has also forgotten women – half the population. Labor’s record and policies in relation to women are miles ahead, because Labor introduced quotas decades ago. In 2025, the “Liberal Party’s women problem” remains a tiresome post-election theme.

After the 2022 bloodbath, the party offered delusional analysis, with many blaming it mainly on the “Morrison” factor. A review led by Jane Hume and Brian Loughnane offered 60 pages of analysis based on 600 submissions that found reports of poor treatment of women in the party, that declining support among women was an “important factor” in the loss and that recommended a target of 50 per cent representation of women in the party’s parliamentary ranks within a decade. It went precisely nowhere.

At the time, Sussan Ley repeatedly said, “we’re talking to women,” and went on a “listening tour” around the country. Who are they listening to? Female MPs, such as Hume and Michaelia “Trump is a man of action” Cash remain caught in the same patriarchal vortex, willing to compromise to hold on to relevance.

 

When Simon Holmes à Court asked me to join the Climate 200 advisory board before the 2022 election, under the pillars of climate and integrity, I agreed – but on the condition he added a third pillar. Women.

Integrity is about respect for the community you represent. There is integrity in serving your community, which entails listening to your constituents, as grassroots movements do, and taking action in parliament on behalf of them. This is how the independents succeed, whether they’re known as “community independents”, “teals” or “Climate 200-backed candidates”.

However, they didn’t enjoy the luxury of balance of power in the last parliament. And with Labor’s significantly increased majority in 2025, they now have even less power. Australians know this. For the foreseeable future, only the Labor Party can claim major party status – especially as the remaining right-wing sliver of the Liberal Party is now firmly beholden to the Nationals. This election, the Liberals managed to slash the number of urban seats they hold (including outer metropolitan areas) to just 10.

So, the same old questions are asked again – “how can the Liberal Party rebuild?” It’s hard to know where to start. The answers are: by addressing their economic policy vacuum; their anti-women, pro-nuclear, anti-renewables, anti-equality stances; their negative and divisive culture wars. None of this is likely to happen soon.

Better to turn our focus to harnessing the power of the community independents, who mirror the values of the constituents once valued by the Liberals in their “blue-ribbon” seats. Having galvanised their local communities, the independents are more truly representative of them.

And together, they could be a greater force to be reckoned with.

A Community Independents Party wouldn’t be a contradiction. It would bolster and harness the community independent MPs and candidates’  presence under a national banner, and appeal to those Australians who want their vote to go to a party that shares their values.

The candidates could still align to the Climate 200 philosophy of evolving from grassroots local communities, as long as the three pillars are non-negotiable: climate, integrity and women’s equality. They could maintain flexibility on whether or not to vote unanimously with the bloc and could benefit from economies of scale during campaigning and policy communication. Moreover, as a party they could gain representation in the Senate, fielding highly credentialled former MPs or candidates for the upper house, such as Kylea Tink in New South Wales and Zoe Daniel in Victoria.

The structure need not mirror that of major or minor parties but could function more like a values-based model – agile, democratic, transparent. This would enable more powerful advocacy on issues their communities and Australians care about.

As someone who has served both as a Liberal Party MP and as an independent MP, and who supports the community independents movement, it’s my view that such a party could transform the political landscape.

It’s time. For a new party. 

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