Emma Gillespie

So it's not necessarily about stepping away entirely from...

the independent platforms that got these women elected in the first place.

But I think what's interesting is we have Senator David Pocock.

He is a senator for the ACT.

He's not considered in the same light as this group of Teals, but he is an independent and he has previously received funding from Climate 200.

Yeah, and I think because he's so vocal on so many policy areas as an independent politician,

Literally, independently, he will, you know, be speaking at a presser by himself talking about the issues that he cares about, whereas many of the other Teals that I mentioned will often move or vote or speak as one and address an issue together.

Not all the time, but certainly sometimes.

So David Pocock was actually on Insiders on Sunday on the ABC.

He left the door open but was measured about whether or not he would join this Teal party.

Here's a little bit of what he said to David Spears on Insiders.

I think because we've seen the way that One Nation has been able to mobilize as a minor party and the influence that it now has over the political conversation, that the discourse has shifted away from, you know, individual MPs not being able to achieve anything as part of a greater group.

So there's also this idea that Australia is really missing a true center party.

that we have Labor and that it has this huge majority, but that the coalition has fractured so much that we don't have an opposition that is able to really unite to hold them to account and that we're missing that centrist political ideology in parliament.

But there is a practical reason too for this.

There are some new campaign finance reforms that will come into effect from next year and they allow formal parties to spend more money than independents in their campaigning and

in the run-up to an election.

So those reforms, which are aimed to make things fairer, to curb massive political donations to individuals, that a fallout of that will impact how the Teals can campaign.

But the more political argument is that, you know, a formal party structure could expand the Teals' movement into seats where there's currently no independent candidate at all.

There's also an argument that One Nation at the moment are the sole beneficiary to the coalition fracturing, that they're picking up these extra seats because the coalition is in peril.