Australia’s party system was once dominated by Labor and the Coalition, but now it has shifted from a near two-party system where independents and minor parties took about 4 per cent of the national primary vote in 1975 to a landscape where current polling is indicating they would attract around 34 per cent of the vote if a federal election was held this year, the highest on record.
In that context, the 26-vote win of independent Nicolette Boele in the formerly safe Liberal seat of Bradfield is a good time to ask what this new phase of politics looks like from the inside.
Her victory was confirmed after a full recount and a legal challenge in the Court of Disputed Returns, stretching the contest over several months.
Boele says there was no single “hardest” day in that period.
“We took each step as it came,” she said in an interview at her electorate office. “Seeing every stage up close, including the court process, reinforced my confidence in Australia’s democratic systems.”
She frames her mandate as changing “how democracy gets done” and adds that she wants to bring decisions “out of closed rooms and into community view much earlier”, keeping “respect, listening and civility” as “non-negotiables”. She calls it a modern form of government “of, with and by the people”.
In her first weeks, that approach has taken the form of a series of public forums across Bradfield. The topics range from “everyday productivity” for families and small businesses. to road-user charges in a high electric-vehicle area, housing supply and building standards. She also wants environmental approvals to be faster and more transparent while still protecting nature.
The aim is simple: “bring Canberra’s debates home, and take Bradfield’s views back.”
Her early priorities also include large-scale casework and pressure on services. She points to work she has done pushing the government to bring forward more home-care packages so older residents can live at home longer, and to resolve a student HECS debt problem linked to a course closure.
Multicultural outreach has started quickly.
Within her first fortnight, Boele met with Chinese and South Asian community leaders to talk about family and domestic violence; access to early-childhood education; create visa pathways for workers in care and construction; and future of international students who train in Australia and want to stay.
On foreign affairs, she notes that cross bench MPs rarely get a formal vote, but says the war in Gaza “dominates my correspondence”. She wants the Australian Government to do more to push for peace, including the release of Israeli hostages, ending bombardment and starvation, and giving stronger attention to Australia’s duties under UN treaties.
On AUKUS, she remains sceptical about cost and scrutiny, and argues that defence policy should sit alongside regional diplomacy, trade and clean-energy supply chains. She also wants climate change to be treated as a core national security risk, with planning for displacement, food and resilience in Australia’s neighbourhood.
Earlier this year, a failed joke made headlines. She now calls it “a personal learning moment”.
“Public life holds us to higher standards, and rightly so,” she said. “My focus now is delivering the program I ran on – cheaper, cleaner homes; better early-childhood education; and a community that’s involved from the start.”
