In the National Interest #: The Big Teal

- Blurb -

' We will not achieve net zero in the cafes, dinner parties and wine bars of our inner cities. ' Little infuriated the forgotten people of the twenty-first century - women and younger voters, especially - more than Scott Morrison' s deluge of disparagement on the issues that mattered to them. The May 2022 election marked the great re-engagement of those ignored and patronised for too long on climate, integrity and gender equity. The electoral map has been dramatically redrawn. However, the triumph of the ' teals' was not entirely unexpected to those assisting their rise, such as Climate 200 founder Simon Holmes a Court. As Australia entered its lost decade on climate action, he observed that conventional advocacy had become a case of diminishing returns, and that Cathy McGowan' s election as a community independent in 2013 provided a template for direct political engagement. The result was Climate 200, a crowdfunded outfit intended to provide the money and expertise to better match the major parties and turbocharge the grassroots movement emerging in thirty-plus electorates. Despite a relentless and increasingly shrill campaign of vilification aimed at Holmes a Court and the candidates by the Liberals, assisted by their media mates, we saw the election of six new community independent MPs and one senator. It was a victory of facts over fear, priorities over prejudice. It was a blow to the unfit-for-purpose ' majoritariat' , a rejection of the false binary choice between parties that no longer reflect the hopes and complexity of modern democratic Australia. This is the story of how a team of inspired young tech-heads and older sages used their real and virtual-world experience to help a cluster of communities get the representation they wanted.