By KATH GANNAWAY
INDEPENDENTS are gearing up for an assault on the two-party system and they have gone to Indi to see how it’s done.
Independent candidate for Eildon Bruce Argyle was one of about 100 people who attended a forum hosted by Voices 4 Indi which, ran a grassroots election campaign that saw Cathy McGowan take the seat in last year’s Federal election.
Mr Argyle said there was a significant overlap in the Indi and Eildon electorates.
He said while Indi had the luxury of a lengthy community consultation campaign, his Eildon campaign would be squeezed into a shorter time frame.
“We like the community consultation approach, which they called ‘kitchen teas’, and we’re intending to have consultation groups across the electorate,” he said.
The use of social media and the engagement and involvement of young people was a hallmark of the McGowan campaign.
Mr Argyle said of two main ‘take-aways’ from the forum the first was that much of the effectiveness of the Indi campaign was about broad representation.
“It is not about the one vote that you get into Parliament with, but about the representation, the advocacy, the networking and the working with people in your electorate on a day-to-day basis,” he said.
“She (McGowan) said ‘Independents are never in Opposition – they are always part of the discussion’ and that resonates,” he said.
He said the second was that Independents can represent a diversity of views that were not necessarily their own.
“We’re not going to mimic or mirror everything that they did in Indi, we have a different time frame, different community and I’m a different person.
“What I am wanting our Independent campaign to be is a strong voice for local issues,” he said.
