The Australian Federal Election 2025 Could Be a Win For Independents

Australian Democrats founder, Senator
Don Chipp, embodied the role of minor
parties holding the balance of power with
his quote of "keep the bastards honest."
Photo Manipulated Caricature by TET.

As of writing this, the actual Australian Federal Election date has yet to be announced, as our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, attempts to keep the focus on the fallout of severe weather events in Queensland, however it's looking likely that some time in May is the safest bet.

Despite this, all parties have been hard at campaigning, with smaller parties, and in particular, conservative independent candidates, seemingly rallying together to make sure people know how much influence they can have just by preventing the two major parties (Labor and the Liberal/National coalition) from having a majority in either (or both) houses of parliament.

They're also doing their part to make sure voters finally understand that preferential voting works in everybody's favor over one person, one vote - where your vote dies with whoever you voted for if they fail to get a majority.

In the preferential system, if your preferred candidate doesn't get a majority, your vote flips over to your second choice. If they don't get a majority, it flips to your next choice, and so on. The system actually favors smaller parties and independents more so than the big two parties.

The preferential voting system is my favorite part of elections because I've been voting smaller parties and independents for years. Largely because those parties generally do what Australian pollical legend, and founder of The Australian Democrats, Senator Don Chipp, expounded in such simple terms, "keep the bastards honest."

While this all is just my opinion based on the advertising I've seen so far (I can't be bothered sourcing ads to back up my thoughts), back in February 2025, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) Four Corners ran a documentary, Why this Australian federal election will be different, exploring the rise of independents and minor parties, stating at the time that "Independents and minor parties are set to capture more than a third of the vote and become the king makers in the new parliament".

Despite voters and even candidates becoming more educated about how Australian politics work, I fully expect to hear the usual shit, we've now inherited from Trump's failed campaign for re-election after his first term like, the election was rigged, preferential voting isn't fair, the Australian Electoral Commission is corrupt... etc. etc.

There's no place for that nonsense in Australia. If you're candidate didn't win, unless you can prove without a doubt, something shady was going on, you're doing nothing for the credibility of your candidate. Who votes for them is just as much a reflection of who and what a candidate stands for as the candidate themselves.

While I'd never say it's impossible to rig an election in Australia, the big parties don't need to, and the smaller parties don't have the infrastructure to really make a dent. Maybe they could rig an electorate or two at best. However, if they're that well coordinated they should be winning seats without the need to rig anything.

All this to say, I'm toying with maybe writing about a few of my political leanings over the coming weeks. I'm a woke leftist but I'm not above voting for the right in my local electorate. All the candidate has to do is show up. 

Which is what happened the year I voted for the Liberal Party. Their guy showed up and did all the rounds of various community groups. I didn't even know the name of anyone from the left that year (and I was in politics myself at the time as an elected local government councilor).

We'll see what happens. I don't actually follow politics all that closely any more thanks to mainstream media being a shit show of opinions telling people how to think. The News is not opinion and I won't watch any media that tries to tell me what they think presented as 'news'.