#8 Kate Chaney and the conscience vote

Kate Cheney, the federal independent member for Curtin in Western Australia, discusses her journey into politics and the importance of independent voices. She initially felt physically ill at the thought of politics but decided to run as an independent candidate after realizing the need for different voices and ways of working in politics. Cheney believes in making conscience votes and consulting with the community and her own conscience on every issue. She plans to run again in the next federal election. Cheney represents the seat of Curtin, which includes both affluent and less wealthy suburbs and is known for its natural features. She has a background in sustainability and believes in addressing climate change and finding a new economic base for Australia's prosperity. Cheney was influenced by climate scientist Will Steffen and aims to speak to different audiences about climate change using different language. Welcome to the Voices of Franklin podcast, I'm your host, Steve Williams. Today, I'm talking to Kate Cheney, elected in 2022 as the federal independent member for Curtin in Western Australia. In this podcast, she discusses her journey into politics and how she felt physically ill at the thought of it, initially at least, what she cares about now, and the fact that every vote that an independent member like her makes is a conscience vote. Kate Cheney, welcome to the Voices of Franklin podcast. Thank you very much, Stephen. To start off, would you tell the listener a bit about yourself and how you came to be elected in the federal seat of Curtin? Sure. I had never been involved in politics before. I'd done lots of other things in my career. I started as a lawyer and then did an MBA and worked as a strategy consultant. I'd worked in the corporate sector in social impact roles around sustainability and Aboriginal affairs and then also in the community services sector and strategy. I was asked, and I've always had an interest in systems change, I suppose, and fairness and issues, but never really saw a role in politics because it all just looked a bit revolting and I didn't really feel like I fit with either party. And then in January 2022, I was asked by a community group if I would consider running as an independent. And the thought of it made me want to vomit because it was just so big and scary, but I thought about it for a couple of weeks and had lots of conversations. And after a while, I decided, after a couple of weeks, I said yes, really having decided that I'd regret not doing it more than I would regret doing it because it looked like we needed some different voices in politics and some different ways of working. And I thought, I can't just sit around and wait for someone else to do it. So I said yes to the Curtin Independent Community Group that was looking for a candidate. And then we had a four-month campaign and ended up with a 15% swing and I narrowly won the seat after it had been a liberal seat for many years. So it's been a very interesting change of life in the last couple of years. So in your case, there was no contest with another potential candidate as we see in some independent seats like Indi. Well, there was a group that had been speaking to a lot of different people. So I suppose it was up to them and they'd had a number of conversations. I think they had some potential candidates and that group made an assessment and asked me to run. I wasn't really involved in an open competitive process. That was really done by the group and I kept saying to them, if there's a better candidate I'll be very supportive, but they came to the view that I thought I was the best candidate. So they hadn't been going for very long, but for a couple of months they'd been having kitchen table conversations and talking to people about what the key issues were and talking to potential candidates. And you must be enjoying it, Kate, because I noticed that you've just announced you're going to run again in the next federal election, whenever that will be held. Yeah, that's right. And I do enjoy it. It's an incredibly intense job, but it feels worth doing. And that's probably the most significant thing, that enjoyment even, that it definitely feels like it is a positive force in our democracy at what I think is a delicate time. So it's very satisfying to be involved in meaningful work and so I definitely want to continue to give my community the opportunity to be represented outside the major parties in the next term, if they believe that it has been a success so far. And it must be great when every vote is a conscience vote for you, you're not being told by somebody else how to vote. That's right, it really feels like it goes back to the fundamental principle of representative democracy, where I consult with community on issues and also my own conscience as well, as you say, and agonise over every vote. And it's interesting when the bells ring and you go into parliament to vote, the crossbench are agonising and the major parties just go to the side that they've been told to go to. And it really feels like we are going back to those fundamental principles of thinking on every issue, what's in the best interest of not just my community, but also the country. And really assessing each issue on its merits, based on the best evidence you have in front of you at the time. Yeah, I like that on your website, where you say you have to think about what's in the best interest of Curtin, but not just Curtin, also Australia, I think that's incredibly important. Yeah, one of the things I've found really interesting is that so much of politics assumes that everyone is driven by self-interest, but I see frequently in my community, people are thinking about the bigger picture and they are thinking about what sort of country they want to live in. So sometimes, even if they personally don't benefit from an outcome, they support it because it's good for the country. And I think it's great that we should be appealing to our better angels and actually broadening that conversation out, rather than always focusing on what's in it for me. And just quickly, to clue listeners in to the seat of Curtin, it's more of a suburban type seat, is that correct? And fairly affluent. Sorry, Stephen, you just froze for a moment, can you repeat that? Your seat there of Curtin, just to explain to listeners who may not know about it, what's it like there? So it stretches between the edge of Perth City and the ocean, up and down the coast in the suburbs of Perth. It does include some of the wealthier suburbs of Perth, but also some suburbs that aren't as wealthy as well. So I think some are below median income in the country, but it generally is connected to, people think of it as being a wealthier electorate. It's got a lot of beautiful natural features, so it's bordered by the river on one side and the sea on another side, and a freeway on the third side of the triangle. But it has some beautiful bushland, lakes, and riverfront, and certainly protecting the local environment is an issue that's quite close to the hearts of many residents. And I noticed you did work in sustainability during your time at West Farmers, which is a very large corporation. You worked there for about six years or so, and ended up being in sustainability. I'm just wondering, what were your big influences as you came to grips with that job in sustainability? Were there certain heroes or particularly important scholars or academics that informed your work? Yeah, so I came to climate change via a slightly different path to many. I'd been at West Farmers in an aboriginal affairs role. I then moved into a role setting up a new department that was looking at investment opportunities and high-growth industries, and so that was sort of corporate venturing. And in that role, I was thinking about how will the world change over the next 20 years, and where are the big opportunities and risks for business. And through that lens, I kept coming up against climate change as being one of the big drivers of change in the world in the next 20 years. And I suppose I'd been obviously aware of the issue of climate change before, but the enormity of it hadn't really hit me. And I think looking at it through that professional lens, I did start thinking about, well, what does this mean for our business, and how we need to think differently about our business. And so I actually went from that role and asked if I could then move into the sustainability role, which had previously been much more focused on reporting, but I saw it as being an increasingly important strategic issue and something that we needed new attention on. So that was my path in there. I went and studied with Will Steffens in the UK briefly, and he certainly had a big impact on understanding the enormity of the challenge ahead and the risks that we were facing. And then I really took on, in that role in sustainability in a big company, looking at how do we translate what has been seen as a green issue into meaningful language for different audiences, so that we are thinking about this from all the different perspectives that we need to, to see this huge societal change and economic change. So that was a pretty significant factor for me. That combined with a longer-term interest in social justice and thinking about how do we do this in a way that has fair outcomes and actually guides us towards the country that we want to be, rather than only seeing it as being a cost. And so having come from that context, then certainly one of the issues under the previous government, I lamented like everyone else, heading off to COP with really nothing to show for our position at that point. And I did feel ashamed to be Australian when it came to our approach to climate change. And it certainly felt like a motivating issue for me to drive some better action at a national level and also use what I've learned about speaking to different audiences on the issue using different language to try and speak to some of the people in my electorate who might be framing their thoughts in terms of where is our future economic prosperity coming from. At the moment, Western Australia, our three top exports are two fossil fuels, coal and gas and the country, and then iron ore, which requires huge amounts of energy to process. And so I think even if you don't want to get deep into the science of climate change, if you accept that the world is going ahead on this decarbonisation journey, Australia needs to find a different economic base to generate prosperity into the future. And I think that brings a different audience to the table in terms of thinking about what our transition looks like. Yeah. Yeah. So the late Will Stephan there died far too early, one of Australia's most well-known climate scientists, probably because of his work with what became the Climate Council. So really, climate change was really the most, or the dominant subject in your work with in sustainability at Westphalians. Is that right? Oh, no. I mean, it was one of many. I would say, you know, sustainability really was environmental, social and governance. So, but climate change felt like the issue where we were least prepared. So certainly a big factor. And then in the campaign, when I talked to my community about the issues that we cared about, integrity of government and rebuilding trust in government was a fundamental issue, along with climate and along with being an inclusive and compassionate society. And also thinking about, you know, long-term economic reform and trying to break the short-term cycle of, you know, the short-term political cycle and actually face up to some of the challenges we have on issues like housing and tax reform that are not popular for the major parties to talk about. But we need to be the grown-ups in the room. We actually need to deal with these long-term issues. So probably the common thread was long-term thinking, because that fed into, you know, many of those different issues. We'll get into more social policy in a minute. But just to stick with sustainability a little bit longer. Often when you study sustainability, you end up reading a lot about the shortcomings of mainstream economics. Some people in your job would learn some environmental economics. That's where you get the triple bottom line stuff that you just mentioned. That's usually seen as being part of the mainstream economic school, the neoclassical school. You would have read some other stuff, presumably, though that question, the focus on GDP, for instance, you mentioned that in your first speech to Parliament, as I recall. Did those kind of subjects crop up in your study of sustainability? This often conflict we have between wanting to increase prosperity. However we define it, and yet the limitations imposed by the natural environment. Yeah, and I mean, there is a deep conflict there that I think we will be grappling with for some time to come. And I think there are different ways you can frame it. You know, at its basic level, we have finite resources and a species that seems to be pretty keen on infinite growth and expansion. And I mean, in my mind, the opportunity there is redefining prosperity and thinking deeply about what success looks like. And I've done some interesting work with my community on the wellbeing economy framework where we had two workshops, one with a broad cross-section of ages and demographics, and then also one with my youth advisory group where the treasurer was putting together a wellbeing framework as part of the budget. But rather than commenting on what had been prepared already by Treasury, we started from scratch and said to 100 people in the room, what are the things that make a good life? And then we grouped them together and prioritised them and then compared them to what the treasurer had come up with the wellbeing framework. And I think this sort of thinking, we're going to see more of it because I think it's pretty well recognised that economic growth only measures one aspect of flourishing and people are actually interested in a whole lot of other aspects too. So we can't ignore economic growth but we have to see it in its proper position as being only part of the story and think about how we use resources differently, what we aspire to, how we define success at a personal level as well as a societal level. And some of this is really challenging thinking because at the same time a capitalist society has actually delivered huge gains in terms of pulling people out of poverty in the last 100 years and we can't ignore that it does actually contribute to an efficient use of resources. We just need to get the rules right so that things are fully costed and that's been part of the failure in the environmental context that we haven't fully costed the way we're using resources. If we get the rules right then we should be able to use market structures to deliver efficient outcomes but it's about having a market economy not a market society. Everything can't be driven by a market. There's a time and a place and we need to get the rules right so that we're actually optimising for the right things and delivering decisions that are in the best interest of people on the planet. There's plenty of good scholarship on this sort of stuff if governments would be interested in looking, such as the work from ecological economists including the late Herman Daly's when the stars of the field and even the UK government had that famous report, prosperity without growth. So there's a whole bunch of things governments could do and I'm glad you mentioned Jim Chalmers wellbeing budget which has kind of gone off the boil a lot lately. He might mention it in next month's budget. I think we're going to hear a lot more though about what he's been foreshadowing with Australia and basically making more stuff particularly what's usually classed as green stuff or what's usually called renewable energy stuff which is good. We'll wait and see the detail but there has been that shift, I think, from Chalmers and maybe the Treasury Department. Do you perceive that shift, Kate Cheney, that movement away from wellbeing? Yeah, look I think it does seem to have gone off the boil a bit although I believe he did mention it yesterday and I'm going to follow it up with him actually because I'm keen to hear his thoughts. I think the focus after last year was we don't even have the data to measure how we're going so we've identified some measures and the Treasury level is now focusing on gathering data so we can actually baseline what it is that we're trying to improve. That is an important part of the puzzle but it's not the whole picture and I think having that broader conversation about what we value as a country can build a common platform to move forward from. I suspect that in a cost of living crisis the government has decided that that is the language that people are going to want to hear more about, how government can reduce the pressure on their cost of living. And so I suspect at the moment if the language was shifted to the wellbeing economy there would be political accusations that you're trying to distract from the economic challenges that people are experiencing at the moment. So perhaps we'll hear more of it as those cost of living pressures ease and certainly I am also hearing from constituents about the pressures of cost of living and the need for government to be very conscious that that's what people are experiencing at the moment. Yeah on the surveys I've seen we've got about half of Australians struggling to make ends meet at the moment which is pretty shocking when you would think there would be a trajectory where things improve for the average person. Clearly they're not. We're in what some scholars call a polycrisis. Kate Chaney you must have come across that term where not only do you have an environmental crisis much bigger than climate change because there's biodiversity crisis, water crisis, soil crisis, forest crisis and it goes with the environment. But then you have, as you say, the cost of living crisis which is part of the housing crisis, the health crisis, the private sector debt crisis, aged care crisis and on it goes. Something's clearly wrong at a fairly fundamental level. And as you say there's no adequate measurements or some framework where government can measure these things and then make corrective action. Yeah I mean absolutely. I suppose one of the things I've also tried to do in coming into this role is not to always reach for the most extreme language because I do think we need to recognise that there is nuance and so I'm wary of calling everything a crisis all at once. I think that there are always issues that people need to deal with. We certainly are facing some big ones at the moment. But one of the concerns I have is when you look at all of those different situations simultaneously it's very easy to feel hopeless and throw your hands in the air. And so it's all too hard and actually we need to just be chipping away at the things that we can do. So I'm trying to bring some pragmatism to the role and find opportunities to have some optimism about our future. So for example in my community we had 50 volunteers for a year working in five different working groups on what we call our Curtin Pathway to Net Zero. Where we've actually laid out what our pathway to net zero looks like for our community in terms of changes we need to see on electricity, building, transport, greening and waste. And under each of these identifying what are the things individuals can do? What do we need local governments, state governments and federal governments to do to smooth that path? And also talking about all the co-benefits of heading down that path in terms of physical and mental health, cost of living, savings, the list goes on. To try and create a little bit of a sense that it is possible and we can actually address these issues in a way that we don't have to chuck everything out and start again. We can get there with a little bit of will and empower people to actually both be able to advocate for specific changes with their different representatives but also changes in their own lives. And I've found working with that group is people feel a lot better about things if you're actually doing something rather than sitting around and saying it's all terrible and it's all hopeless. And I found both in the campaign and then also in that Curtin Pathway to Net Zero project that sense of optimism and community was very energising. I'm not saying that there aren't huge challenges ahead but it is possible and we can get there and we need to just keep chipping away at it and finding the steps. What can you do on Monday about this rather than actually just thinking the whole system is messed up and everything needs to fundamentally change? Because then I think probably nothing changes. Yeah, I was looking at your website this morning on the Net Zero Curtin campaign. There's a lot of good stuff there. As you say, those solutions are really all there and have been for decades. I've worked in this area for decades myself, Kate, as a sustainability engagement officer at local government level. There's no excuses for not improving, making our buildings more energy efficient, having more public transport, having more solar and wind in appropriate places, moving to electric vehicles much more quickly. There's a lot of policy failures in this space, unfortunately. Yeah, residents, citizens are only too willing to make these changes if given the opportunity. So perhaps you and I differ a little bit on the depth of reform needed. I think we both agree on the urgency of it but how far we have to go, I suppose, in fixing these problems. That's for each person to grapple with. Maybe, Kate Chaney, this is why we need something like an independent commission of experts who can grapple with this stuff and examine all this relevant evidence and scholarship because people like you and me can only do so much, particularly with your work with particularly with your workload and the workload of every politician. You do need to rely on expert advice. I noticed that Zali Stegall, one of her policies, is calling for an independent sustainability commission. Sounds like an idea worth exploring, Kate Chaney. It has been done elsewhere. Such as in the UK. Yeah, I'm certainly getting the institutional... Sorry, you're breaking up a little bit. No, I'm just not saying anything at the moment. That's all. Wait. No, you were though. You paused and then went back to the next section. Sorry, I might have interrupted you. Yeah, I mean getting the institutional structures right is absolutely important. And I think we've got the net zero authority that's trying to do some of that long-term planning. The climate change authority has a role to play. Getting that structure right is vital. And certainly, I think we can learn from, for example, the Welsh example of having the Future Generations Commissioner, which is another part of the institutional structure that I think we need. And I suppose I'm not questioning the depth of change that's needed. But I do think that you need to be able to bite something off that you can actually do straight away, rather than saying we need to chuck everything up and start with new institutions. We have to start from where we are. And so in this role, I try to be pragmatic about improving every bit of legislation that comes across the desk and keeping some big ideas on the table so that they're part of the national conversation. But also being a bit realistic, because I want to actually see concrete things changing rather than it just be the conversation. So there's always going to be a balance there. And continuing to improve our institutional framework for planning a path forward is vital. Just in a few minutes, we've got left. Kate, can you tell us about this new crossbench bill, crossbench in the House of Reps and the Senate? It's trying to reform electoral matters. On electoral reform. Electoral reform. There's a whole suite of things that's being proposed. Can you quickly tell us about that in a couple of minutes? Sure. So I sit on the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters, and we did a review of the 2022 election and had a lot of evidence from a lot of different expert witnesses on it. I then did additional comments to the committee report on that, because I felt like there were some issues that the major parties didn't particularly want to push, but they seemed, based on the expert evidence I'd heard, to be pretty important for reforming our democracy. And so I proposed a private member's bill in September that had 13 changes around improving transparency, reducing financial influence, and levelling the playing field. And the Fair and Transparent Elections Bill, which was introduced into both houses by the crossbench, working with David Popoff and Jackie Landy and the other lower house crossbenchers, addressed many of those, again, around those three things. So making sure that people can see who's donated to campaigns before they vote for them. And these things underpin so many of the difficult issues we're dealing with. Because if your representative has a sense of obligation to gambling companies or mining company, gas companies or something, it has the potential to influence how they think about those issues. So I think transparency is a really good place to start. Reducing financial influence. I'd like to see political donations banned from social harm industries and also from government contractors. So we're not seeing this very cosy relationship. And then levelling the playing field. We don't let Coles and Woolies make the laws about supermarket regulations, but we let the two major parties make the laws about political competition. And 99.6% of the Australian population is not a member of a major political party, yet they're the ones who make the rules. And they do tend to embed the status quo. So I want to make sure that competition is still possible and new challenges have a chance against incumbent party candidates. Things like capping donations or capping spend sounds great. But in reality, it has the effect of embedding the status quo because it gets replaced with public funding. And so the public is just funding the same old, same old to keep their seats. And it makes it very, very difficult for new challenges to get up. So it's a complicated space, but I think it's a really important one because who's in there making the decisions and who they owe obligations to is such a fundamental part of how we deal with so many of those long-term issues. And so I'm now really hoping that the government will see that there is a suite of electoral reforms on the table that could get through both houses now and come up with a good package of reforms that meet community needs in time for the next election. We'll keep our eyes on that, Kate Cheney. And I just, in closing, want to thank you so much for making the time to talk to me this morning. And I wish you every success with that particular bill. Thank you very much, David. And I wish you every success with Voices of Franklin. It is a very fulfilling community journey, I think, to go through the process of working out what you care about and finding a representative who can make your voice heard in parliament. So the best of luck with that journey ahead. Thanks, Kate. Over and out.