Malcolm Turnbull

At the moment, there's only one.

If a new party were to fill that, whether it succeeded would depend on the quality of its advocates and the quality of the policies they were promoting.

Well, look, I'm not sure what the reports are.

I'm not organising a new political party, full stop, so I'm not involved in doing that.

Do I think it would be healthy if there were one?

Yes, I think it would be healthy.

But I support diversity in our politics.

I like to see competition.

I like our political system to be competitive.

So yes, and I also would say that the quality of these independents is very, very high.

There isn't a cabinet that I've been a member of over the years which would not have been improved by the inclusion of one or more of those independents.

So frankly, they can make a better contribution to Australia.

if they were part of a government or an alternative government, an opposition, and they can only do that really if they are part of a larger group.

Now, it might just be an alliance, a collaboration, but it's got to have some sort of coherence so that they can present themselves at an election time and instead of saying, I'm running to be your feisty independent

giving speeches to an empty chamber from the crossbench.

They can say, I am running to be part of a government in which I expect to be the treasurer or the minister for the environment or something like that.

Ultimately, the country is run by the government and the government is the group of MPs that have the majority of seats in the House of Representatives.

And if you're not playing for that,

you are not really going to make the sort of impact that the quality of those candidates should be making.

They would have to explain that.