Claire Miles will again contest the next federal election as an independent candidate for the seat of Canberra. Photo: Supplied.
Voices of Canberra recently launched an official search for a candidate the grassroots group can endorse for the seat of Canberra at the next federal election – and you could almost hear Labor trying hard to restrain its giggling.
The merriment wouldn’t have been out of any sense of arrogance that the ALP’s continued incumbency is a certainty, however.
It would have been because the otherwise astute Voices of Canberra is about to make it far easier for the seat to stay in the government’s hands.
Here’s why.
A safe Labor electorate sitting on a 19.5 per cent margin, as Canberra currently is, will need a strong and credible independent if there is to be any chance of making a dent or – even harder – pulling off a surprise victory.
But there is absolutely no hope of that happening if two strong, credible independent candidates are running.
They will just eat each other’s votes to the benefit of the incumbent.
The electorate of Canberra already has a proven strong independent running in Claire Miles, who has declared her intention to contest the 2028 federal election and has already hit the ground running.
Miles ran for the seat in last year’s election and secured 10.91 per cent of the primary vote – without any financial backing or army of volunteers.
That’s practically 11 per cent, which cannot by any means be considered a protest vote.
Protest votes for an individual candidate, at best, might reach 5 per cent. Most don’t even get to 2 per cent.
What an 11 per cent vote can be considered is a mandate to run for the seat again.
That’s obviously the message Miles took from her result last year and, encouraged by it, is giving it another tilt in the hope of taking it further.
Voices of Canberra (previously known as Voices for Canberra) didn’t contest the seat at the last election, but is now perhaps buoyed by Miles’s example of what a solid independent campaign might be able to achieve there.
But Miles is not going to go away just because Voices now wants to contest the seat, no matter how good the group thinks its yet-to-be-endorsed candidate might be.
Not even if David Pocock gives his personal tick to the Voices’ latecomer.
Miles has already been busy in the past months publicly raising policy issues and has even bought into what was needed for Canberra from this week’s Federal Budget.
And she is already aligned with the good community and policy principles that Voices will be campaigning on.
A Voices candidate won’t be selected for at least another six months. Claire Miles will be almost a household name in the electorate by then.
Those running Voices of Canberra, Community Independents Project, and ProACT should all take a deep breath, maybe stop acting like self-appointed kingmakers, and realise that their best chance in the seat of Canberra will be if there is only one strong candidate in the race.
They should consider offering to support the one strong candidate that is already in the race.
Should any such offer be extended, Miles would be wise to accept it.
There’s no room for stubbornness here on her part either.
It appears obvious that the umbrella advisory mob, ProAct, and the various Voices groups, see themselves as the rightful organisers of independents in the ACT.
Could the Voices of Canberra have already quietly decided who, from among its own ranks, will be endorsed, and the whole “search” process is little more than a thinly disguised ruse? Who knows?
Word is a high-profile moderate conservative was approached to run but knocked it back.
Wiser heads should prevail on all sides here.
As it stands, Labor is going to be monumentally difficult to topple in the seat of Canberra.
The incumbent, Alicia Payne, is popular, effective and enormously likable. She increased her margin in the last election.
She might do it again if (if) she contests the next election.
Plus, it’s a bolted-on ALP electorate.
But in the current brave new world of politics, upsets are becoming increasingly common.
Voices of Bean endorsed the impressive Jessie Price at the last election and she came within a whisker of winning it.
What she succeeded in doing was turning that electorate into a marginal seat.
Price intends to run again in 2028, and she should.
It will be a different campaign next time, though. Labor is giving the south a little more federal love, and the incumbent, David Smith, has become noticeably more visible. The ALP will be more prepared in Bean in 2028.
The seat of Canberra will be even harder for an independent – or anyone other than a Labor candidate – to win.
It could be done, though, if the overall grassroots movement is serious and doesn’t muddy the field with one too many worthy independents.
Original Article published by Chris Johnson on Region Canberra.
