Margo Kingston

Margo Kingston

Co-publisher and editor-in-chief at No Fibs
Margo Kingston is a retired Australian journalist and climate change activist. She is best known for her stint as Phillip Adams’ ‘Canberra Babylon’ contributor and her work at The Sydney Morning Herald and #Webdiary. Since 2012, Kingston has been a citizen journalist, reporting and commenting on Australian politics via Twitter and No Fibs.
Margo Kingston
Brook Turner is a freelance journalist. He is a former director of The Sydney Opera House, cultural editor of The Australian Financial Review and editor and managing editor of a number of titles, including the AFR Magazine.

WANT AN IN-THE-MOMENT under-the-bonnet account of the roiling, sprawling, seat-of-their pants crash through campaigns of #IndependentsDay candidates and exciting first attempts by voters in regional and rural seats? 

Want to know how the #IndependentsDay movement began, what it became, and the knowledge to speculate what it might become?

Want to dig deep into the operations of its three top power centres – Zali Steggall’s movers and shakers Kirsty Gold and Tina Jackson, Cathy McGowan, and Simon Holmes a Court? 

Want to get the lowdown on the social networks that supercharged and cross fertilised the campaigns?

Want to hear from Australians across the nation about why they dived into it and how it changed their lives?

Want to get a grip on the philosophical, geographic and ‘branding’ tensions whose interplay will shape the movement post its 2022 success?

Want to better understand the zeitgeist shift that made it all happen? 

It’s taken a very long time for the liberal wing of the Liberal Party to collapse, and what a blast that blue ribbon seat voters did it by sending six exceptional independent female non-politicians to Parliament to carry liberalism’s flag. We’re lucky that a not-political long form journalist, and a talented storyteller to boot, earned the trust of key players to speak with him from last last year until just after election day. As a long term chronicler of the movement, I learnt heaps about the campaigns – a little horrified by some bits – and read the voices of key players I’d never heard of. For someone in the trenches Brook Turner’s book, Independents Day: The inside story of the community independents and volunteers who changed politics forever, was a gift. I hope he writes the sequel. 

I hope there’ll also be books by journos or volunteers telling the stories of campaigns in many #independentsDay seats, digging deeper. And that the radically different strands of the movement detail their way of doing #IndependentsDay. The long awaited Voices of Indi account of the #IndiWay of #IndependentsDay will be published by Scribe in May.  

I think I’ll write a few musings that came together by reading Brook’s book, maybe beginning with the controversial topic of colour branding. 

No Fibs would love to publish your review of his book too. The more the better :)

Suggestion: This book is the seminal journalist-writer’s take on an experimental movement for community participatory democracy and future-building reform of our parliamentary democracy and the health of local communities.. Anything could happen, depending in part on the accomodations of the movement’s power players, the responses of the big parties, particularly the post-split Federal Liberal Party, and on opportunists who will try to exploit, mimic or counter its success. As such, it should have chapter notes and an index. Apparently that wasn’t possible due to the tight publication deadline: I suggest chapter notes and an index be posted on line and included in the second edition. 

Verdict: Essential reading for political junkies, the professional political class, community organisers and anyone interested in the possibility of radically reforming our democracy through strengthening community. For people uninterested in politics, it’s an elegantly written page turner with a cast of fascinating characters who join a revolution and have a ball. 

Please enjoy my chat with Brook for the No Fibs podcast. I sure did.

Brook Turner author of Independents Day: The inside story of the community independents and volunteers who changed politics forever
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