#kim rubenstein

Here's a special election-night treat for you. But keep your pants on: although this is review XXX in my 2025 federal election series, a bonus to the 29 reviews I wrote before election day, you cannot get any electoral stimulation from these parties as you will not find them on any ballot nationwide. Nobody erected a corflute for these parties; nobody came to their rallies, nobody left flyers in letterboxes to arouse the attention of potential voters. They are on the AEC's register of parties but they did not or could not get up to the polls.

Back in 2013, at the end of the first edition of this blog, I did a review of the never-rans: parties that never achieved registration and did not endorse an independent candidate. Our never-rans this year are a bit different in that they are registered parties who are running nowhere. There are, amazingly, four of them. This review, then, is more like one I wrote in 2016 for 21st Century Australia, which was registered but ran no candidates (and is the reason why ever since I have not begun drafting reviews until the close of nominations). One of the four parties has a perfectly valid reason for not bothering to run this year, but as we'll see the rest are a bit odd.

Tammy Tyrrell for Tasmania (website)

A former staffer for Jacqui Lambie, Tyrrell won election to the Senate at the 2022 election as the lead candidate for Lambie's Network. But in March 2024, she quit the party for reasons that have never been explained adequately (see my JLN review for more on the party's implosion during 2024). She registered her own party in August 2024, and the website now covers her views on big issues in Tasmania (for starters, she doesn't like the new stadium for Hobart) and solicits constituent support for specific campaigns (it seems the most popular is, uh, bring Aldi to Tasmania).

Tyrrell's term runs through to 2028, so she is not up for re-election this year. Fatima Payman, after her acrimonious split from Labor, founded Australia's Voice as an attempt to seek a national supporter base even though she too is not up for re-election until 2028, so her party does have candidates this year, but the very name of Tyrrell's new party indicates that there are no aspirations for it beyond being a vehicle for Tyrrell herself. Hence, no Tammy Tyrrell for Tasmania on any ballot this election. Fair enough!

Dai Le & Frank Carbone W.S.C. (website for Dai Le)

I actually covered this one in a review as part of this year's series. You can read more on the background there, but basically: Dai Le appears on ballots today as an independent, and the party she registered is not named on ballots anywhere. In an interview with Leo Puglisi, Le kept using cliches to describe how the party registration was part of "planting a seed" for the future, but one struggles to see how that seed can grow when it is not being watered, i.e. voters are not seeing the name on ballots or corflutes or flyers. If she intends to use it in future for a cohort of candidates, building name recognition now would help.

I have 3 speculative theories why Le has not used the party name this time around, all of which are based on absolutely no insider knowledge nor any gossip:

Le thinks that running under the "independent" label is more valuable electorally because some voters have a negative perception of parties and an idealised view about independents (which I discussed in my review of the teals when I urged that group of indies to hurry up and form their own party already)

Maybe the relationship between her and Frank Carbone has cooled or their ambitions and views have diverged in consequential ways

Perhaps her and Carbone had plans that they have now postponed because they could not commit the time and resources necessary to do anything meaningful with the party

(or some mixture of "all of the above")

Kim for Canberra (outdated website)

I have not the first clue why Kim Rubenstein has maintained her party's registration rather than letting it lapse. I have a lot of time for Kim—she is a great scholar whom I know professionally, if fleetingly—and I reviewed her tilt in 2022 favourably. But if she had entertained ideas of running again in 2025, they were not aired publicly nor in any professional space to which I am privy, and she would have been wasting her time if she did try because Pocock has largely filled the electoral space that she would have occupied. I can only assume her party registration will lapse sooner or later.

Better Together (website)

Yeah OK this is the main reason I wanted to do this entry. This is the party of Lucy Bradlow and Bronwen Bock, and if those names sound familiar to you it is because in 2024 they got media attention for a proposed tilt at the now-abolished seat of Higgins as "job-sharing independent candidates". Their initial Bradlow+Bock branding made them look more like a real estate agency than aspirational politicians. After the AEC's redistribution wiped Higgins off the electoral map, they pivoted to standing for the Senate in Victoria and registered this party, still with the intention of being job-sharing candidates.

I cannot emphasise strongly enough how absolutely ridiculous this job-sharing proposal is because it is not legal, it cannot happen, and it will not happen unless and until parliament changes the Electoral Act to permit it. Only one person can be nominated for any one seat in either house of parliament; the states are multi-member electorates for the Senate but each seat must be filled by one and only one person. The job-sharing concept raises serious electoral and parliamentary difficulties that cannot be addressed easily and it is impossible to imagine parliament amending the Electoral Act to allow Bradlow and Bock to do what they want to do. It can't happen, it won't happen, and their persistence in pushing the idea became so tenacious that the AEC had to issue a press release pointing out that it would be compelled to reject any such application.

Getting a public rebuke from the AEC was not enough to stop Bradlow and Bock, who launched a Federal Court case against the Commonwealth in February. They insist that what they want is to make parliament "like any other workplace, where there are options for people who are unable or unwilling to work 24-7 and be always available". Unfortunately, legislating and running the country is not like an ordinary job. In much the same way as a national budget cannot and should not be considered equivalent to a household budget or that running the government cannot and should not be considered equivalent to running a business (despite what some pundits and politicians try to say), parliament cannot be "like any other workplace".

But, in the end, it was all moot. As well as not doing their homework about parliament, governance, or electoral law, Bradlow and Bock did not do their homework about whether they met constitutional eligibility requirements—at least not until they had got months of media attention, wasted the AEC's energy, and gone all the way to the courts. It turns out one of them is a South African citizen and ineligible for election under section 44(i) of the Australian constitution. Aaaand that was that, their tilt at the 2025 election was over.

Running where: ACT

Prior reviews: none, this is a new party

There are two prominent independent campaigns in the ACT seeking a seat in the Senate. One is David Pocock; in my earlier review of his campaign I described the distinctive characteristics of the ACT’s representation and of this contest. The other indie is law professor Kim Rubenstein, who has registered her party with the name Kim for Canberra.

I work in academia, and although I do not know Rubenstein personally, some of my colleagues do. The volume of favourable material on my timeline suggested that Rubenstein was the more popular of the indies, but this was a false impression. Redbridge polling—with the disclaimers that Senate polling is generally unreliable and that this polling was done for Climate 200, who gave the indies seed funding—has Rubenstein around 6–7%, while their most recent poll today puts Pocock’s vote as high as 21% after earlier reports of 11–13%. If, and this is a big if, he gets around 21%, that might be enough to be a chance at winning a seat. Both Rubenstein and Pocock recommend their voters preference the other second, but are otherwise not recommending specific preferences.

Rubenstein has four policy priorities. First is accountability and integrity in politics—yep, she wants a federal ICAC, one of the most popular demands this election across the political spectrum, and to my relief she says “an effective federal ICAC” rather than the cliché about “a federal ICAC with teeth”. Second is urgent climate action, proposing a “Climate Compact” to bring together stakeholders and legislate for emissions reductions as part of the May 2023 budget. Third is a “standing up for Canberra” policy that sounds generic, but she fleshes it out with a notable specific policy: legislation, which she has already drafted, to boost the ACT’s representation from two to four senators. This, to me, is a bare minimum (but good) goal—and the same should be offered to the Northern Territory.

What perhaps distinguishes Rubenstein most from Pocock is her fourth priority: her focus on women’s safety. This is a huge part of her campaign, harnessing the anger of many woman that has been mobilised effectively by Brittany Higgins and Grace Tame. Rubenstein uses the example of parliament as an unsafe workplace for women as a launching pad for policies that seek gender equality and a safer society for women. She would also extend paid parental leave from 18 weeks to 26, which to me still isn’t enough—a year minimum—but it’s something.

It’s an appealing platform. Also, I love that this is actually Kims for Canberra: Rubenstein’s support candidate is Kim Huynh, an ANU politics and philosophy researcher and ABC Radio presenter.

My recommendation: Give Kim for Canberra a good preference.