{"id":55316,"date":"2026-06-25T14:17:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-25T14:17:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/independent-australian-mps-form-new-centrist-political-party\/"},"modified":"2026-06-25T14:17:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-25T14:17:08","slug":"independent-australian-mps-form-new-centrist-political-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/independent-australian-mps-form-new-centrist-political-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Independent Australian MPs form new centrist political party"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Two independent Australian MPs have banded together to launch a new centrist political party which they say is a response to an increasingly divisive landscape.<\/b><\/p>\n

The Community Strong Australia party – launched in Canberra on Thursday – will offer “unity over division and reason over rage”, will have no leader and will allow members to vote freely, rather than along party lines.<\/p>\n

Its two members – Sydney MPs Zali Steggall and Allegra Spender – are from a group of independent MPs known as “teals” who share socially liberal values and want greater climate action.<\/p>\n

The party will offer an “alternate political force” to the current two-party system in Australia, the pair said.<\/p>\n

Australia’s political landscape had traditionally been dominated by the two major parties – the centre-left Labor and the Liberal-Nationals Coalition, which leans conservative.<\/p>\n

Labor won a landslide victory at last year’s federal election<\/a>, securing a second term in power, while the Coalition suffered its worst defeat ever, followed by months of in-fighting.<\/p>\n

In recent months, right-wing party One Nation – led by Pauline Hanson – has seen a surge in support<\/a>, including one poll that found she was the preferred prime minister. <\/p>\n

Asked if the recent rise in support for One Nation and its anti-immigration rhetoric had spurred their decision to form a new party, Steggall and Spender said they had been guided by what their voters were telling them.<\/p>\n

“We absolutely hear those grievances,” Spender said. “People are frustrated and tired of the status quo,” she said, adding that “if I wasn’t in politics, I wouldn’t know who to vote for”.<\/p>\n

Spender, who won her seat in 2022, said the party wants to “hear from communities beyond our own that want a voice that genuinely reflects them”.<\/p>\n

Steggall, a former barrister and Winter Olympian, has been a federal MP since 2019, after she unseated the former prime minister Tony Abbott in an electorate that had been held by the Liberal Party for more than a century. <\/p>\n

“We don’t want the in-fighting, we don’t want the blame game. We want solutions that will make a difference to us,” Steggall said.<\/p>\n

The new party “offers unity over division and reason over rage,” she said, and was an “invitation” to voters “to come and build the kind of Australia we want”.<\/p>\n

Key issues for the party will be housing affordability and cost of living pressures as well as climate change, childcare, education and healthcare.<\/p>\n

The pair also told local media that Climate 200, a political organisation that has helped fund independents that have won several Liberal seats in recent elections, was not involved with the new party. <\/p>\n

New electoral funding laws allow political parties a much bigger budget for campaigning, which some independents have said will disadvantage them.<\/p>\n

Several other independents have ruled out joining, with another two “teal” independents considering their options.<\/p>\n

The party has lodged an application with the Australian Electoral Commission with registration expected to be finalised in October.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Two independent Australian MPs have banded together to launch a new centrist political party which they say is a response to an increasingly divisive landscape. The Community Strong Australia party – launched in Canberra on Thursday – will offer “unity over division and reason over rage”, will have no leader and will allow members to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":55317,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[594,12456,4403,1766,359,2097,3921],"class_list":["post-55316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-australia","tag-australian","tag-centrist","tag-form","tag-independent","tag-mps","tag-party","tag-political"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55318,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55316\/revisions\/55318"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}