Independents rise: will voters put an end to Australia's two party system?

At least three regional electorates in NSW and Victoria could be picked up by independents - two of them supported by Climate 200 and the Regional Voices Fund.

This would swell the number of so-called "teals" in parliament - and potentially force Labor or the Coalition to negotiate a way to governing with a minority.

So how do hung parliaments work? What might Australia's 48^th parliament look like? And what does that mean for the country?

ACM, the publisher of this masthead, has the answers.

Labor in effect holds 78 seats in the House of Representatives where government is formed.

Between The Nationals, the Liberal party, and Queensland's LNP the Coalition in effect has 57 seats.

A party needs at least 76 seats to govern in its own right, but the Greens have four seats, independents 10, and Bob Katter's single-MP party and the Centre Alliance have one each.

While the major parties are scrambling to pick up one another's marginal seats in Sydney and Melbourne - and hack away at support for Greens' and independent MPs in the cities - other political forces are capitalising on voter dissatisfaction with Australia's long-standing two party system.

The primary vote for major parties has been dropping steadily for well over a decade and this has accelerated in recent years.

In 2007 a little over 85 per cent of the Australian electorate voted for either Labor or the Coalition first.

That had declined to just 68 per cent by 2022. In other words, one in three voters was putting number "1" in the box for someone other than a major party.

Over that time, numerous small parties have sprung up, the Greens vote nationally has risen from 7.8 per cent to 12.3 per cent, and support for Pauline Hanson's One Nation has grown to nearly five per cent of first preferences.

The teal movement has also gained traction - and heavy financial backing, mainly through fundraising vehicle Climate 200, convened by businessman and philanthropist Simon Holmes à Court, the son of Australia's first billionaire.

In the wake of Cathy McGowan's success (she wrested the Victorian regional electorate of Indi from the Liberals back in 2013) the independent trickle became a gush.

Rebekha Sharkie won South Australia's rural seat of Mayo in 2016 through Nick Xenophon's party, now rebranded as Centre Alliance.

Dr Kerryn Phelps briefly held former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull's eastern suburbs Sydney seat after a by-election in 2018.

Zali Steggall ousted another former prime minister, Tony Abbott, from Warringah in Sydney the next year and Dr Helen Haines was elected in Indi after Ms McGowan retired.

By the 2022 election the Liberal party had been booted from Mackellar and Wentworth (again) in Sydney, Kooyong and Goldstein in Melbourne, and Curtin in Perth.

David Pocock was elected to the Senate for the ACT the same year.

Meanwhile, the Greens increased their lower house numbers to four. And Andrew Wilkie, first elected in 2010 in Tasmania, remains in parliament for the electorate of Clark on a 20.8 per cent margin.

In the three years since voters last went to the federal polls, Climate 200 got organised and attracted even more serious money.

In 2023-24 it received $4.4m in donations, according to the Australian Electoral Commission.

This election it's helping fund 35 candidates across the country, 19 of them outside major cities.

The Regional Voices Fund has been established to help bankroll specifically regional and rural independents and it's supporting 17 of those, most of whom are also backed by Climate 200.

Now there's the women candidate-focused Vida Fund which is funnelling money to 12 independents.

In effect, these candidates now have the resources of a major party behind them without being tied to a party line.

With funding they've been able to run big billboard advertisements, print tens of thousands of flyers, saturate social media with paid ads, set up schmick websites, make branded T-shirts, consult communications and political experts, and attract willing volunteers.

The "teals" in the existing parliament have generally worked together, drawn by shared goals of science-based action on climate change, transparency and integrity in politics, and gender equity.

Most of the well-funded independent candidates are unlikely to win the seats they're contesting in the 2025 election.

Others already in parliament, but with slim margins, may be knocked out. Dr Monique Ryan in Melbourne's affluent Kooyong holds her seat by just 2.2 per cent.

Kate Chaney in Perth's Curtin has an even slimmer margin of 1.3 per cent and the Liberals have been flat out trying to win back former foreign minister Julie Bishop's seat.

Dr Sophie Scamps in Mackellar (NSW) and Zoe Daniel in Goldstein (Victoria) are both working on margins of 3.3 per cent.

But new independents are rising.

Out in central west NSW Kate Hook is again vying for the 32,600 square kilometre electorate of Calare, where she picked up 20.4 per cent of the primary vote in 2022.

Pre-election YouGov polling gives this seat to Nationals-turned independent in Andrew Gee, who quit the party over its opposition to the Voice to Parliament.

He and Ms Hook are up against The Nationals' Sam Farraway.

Energy is a hot topic here, where the Coalition promises to house one of its seven controversial nuclear reactors if it wins the election and there are pockets of fierce opposition to wind farms.

YouGov polling puts Alex Dyson in the winning position in Wannon in south-west Victoria, a seat Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan has held for 15 years.

Mr Dyson, a former Triple J radio presenter, picked up nearly 20 per cent of the primary vote in 2022 when he ran, while Mr Tehan's support slipped by 6.6 per cent.

The other distinct win for the independents could be in Cowper which stretches along the NSW mid north coast from Coffs Harbour in the north to Port Macquarie in the south.

Sitting Nationals MP Pat Conaghan holds the seat on a 2.4 per cent margin and last election 26 per cent of Cowper voters gave Climate 200-backed independent Caz Heise their first preference.

Again, YouGov polling in the final week of the campaign had the nurse and health administrator winning the seat, as did uComms polling by Climate 200.

If some city Labor seats fall to the Coalition in the suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney where the Liberal party and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton have been campaigning hard, both the major parties could end up with fewer than the magic 76 seats to form government.

Remember 2010?

For 17 days after the election three rural, former Nationals independents - Rob Oakeshott, Tony Windsor and Bob Katter - negotiated with Labor leader Julia Gillard and Liberal leader Tony Abbott to determine which party would govern.

It was the first hung parliament in Australia since World War II - and the first time the lower house had a Greens MP in the form of Adam Bandt, the new member for Melbourne.

Andrew Wilkie, now supported by Climate 200, was also new.

After a national agonising wait, Mr Windsor and Mr Oakeshott joined with Mr Wilkie and sided with Labor, while Mr Katter went with the Coalition.

Despite leading a minority government, Ms Gillard oversaw a huge number of laws passed - 570 bills, according to the ALP.

In a hung parliament there is no handy guidebook. Australia's Constitution provides no rules and it is instead determined by convention.

Immediately after an election, the ball is in the prime minister's court, constitutional law expert Anne Twomey said.

If their party has clearly lost, they will resign quickly to avoid reputational damage.

"Where there's a hung parliament then there is a choice as to what the prime minister does," the University of Sydney professor emerita said.

"Normally the prime minister will stay in office in a caretaker capacity [to] keep the show running."

In the meantime, the crossbenchers would negotiate with both major parties to get commitments for their policy priorities in return for guaranteeing supply and confidence.

If it became clear the prime minister did not have the support of the crossbenchers and, therefore, the lower house, they would resign, Professor Twomey said.

"There are other alternatives. One thing is that the prime minister can just stay on and face parliament if there are doubts as to how people are going to vote - because maybe a group is going to fall apart, or turn on each other or something, and you want to leave it to parliament to decide on the floor," she said.

At that point, the parliament could technically decide it had no confidence in the prime minister and opt to support the opposition leader and party.

"The prime minister then has to resign and, if they don't, there's very good grounds for the Governor-General to sack them. That's the end game."

Internal Labor polling reported by news.com.au suggests the party is planning for as few as 72 seats and as many as 78, which it notionally holds already.

But the party is expecting some electorates to change hands on both sides.

If it were to dip to a 72-seat low, the "teals" and other independents, including ones from the regions, could be in a very powerful position to help decide what Australia looks like for the next three years and in the future.