Alex Dyson in Wannon, Caz Heise in Cowper and Kate Hook in Calare are among those hoping to upset the major parties in the federal election. But don’t call them tealsElection 2025 live updates: Australia federal election campaignPolls tracker; election guide; full federal election coverageAnywhere but Canberra; interactive electorates guideListen to the first episode of our new narrative podcast series: GinaGet our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcastDan Tehan is walking along a beach in the largest town in his electorate when a voice from above cuts through the ocean breeze.“Hey Dan,” a man shouts from a nearby whale-viewing platform. “Go Alex Dyson!”Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter Continue reading…Alex Dyson in Wannon, Caz Heise in Cowper and Kate Hook in Calare are among those hoping to upset the major parties in the federal election. But don’t call them tealsElection 2025 live updates: Australia federal election campaignPolls tracker; election guide; full federal election coverageAnywhere but Canberra; interactive electorates guideListen to the first episode of our new narrative podcast series: GinaGet our afternoon election email, free app or daily news podcastDan Tehan is walking along a beach in the largest town in his electorate when a voice from above cuts through the ocean breeze.“Hey Dan,” a man shouts from a nearby whale-viewing platform. “Go Alex Dyson!”Sign up for the Afternoon Update: Election 2025 email newsletter Continue reading…
Dan Tehan is walking along a beach in the largest town in his electorate when a voice from above cuts through the ocean breeze.
“Hey Dan,” a man shouts from a nearby whale-viewing platform. “Go Alex Dyson!”
Dyson is the independent candidate for Tehan’s seat of Wannon. The comedian has adopted the kelpie in campaign material for this election, and Tehan must feel as if he’s being rounded up.
Wannon is one of Victoria’s largest electorates, stretching from just outside Geelong in the east all the way to the South Australian border and north to the Grampians. It has been in Liberal hands since it was won by Malcolm Fraser in 1955.
But since first running in 2019, Dyson has chipped away at the safe seat such that Tehan’s margin is now only 3.7%.
That thrust Tehan, the shadow minister for immigration and citizenship, into the throes of campaigning before the election had even been called. Has he come across any Dyson supporters while door knocking?
“I’ve got to say, people in the country are, on the whole, pretty polite,” Tehan says while standing on the same platform he will soon be goaded from.
“What I tend to find is that most people will have a conversation with you, most people will say, ‘Yeah, I’m supporting you, or these are the issues that are important to me.’
“I don’t think I can ever remember anyone sort of saying, ‘Go away, I’m voting for someone else.’”
Funding flows
Tehan is one of several sitting members in regional seats trying to shake off challenges from independent candidates that could prove strong.
Among the hopefuls are Dyson, Caz Heise in Cowper and Kate Hook in Calare, all receiving funding from Climate 200. They are less teals, however, than independents in the Cathy McGowan mould: harnessing a sense that major parties fail to properly represent regional electorates by campaigning strongly on local issues such as roads and childcare.
Given the higher-than-usual possibility of a hung parliament, these candidates could hold significant power should they prevail.
In a nod to the teal movement and as a bulwark against political attacks pointing to them as shadow operatives of Climate 200 or the Greens, Dyson and Hook are both publicly declaring their donations.
As of 24 March, Dyson had received about $300,000 and Hook almost $200,000 from Climate 200. Heise is not publicly declaring her donations.
The donation pages also paint a picture about those agitating for change in regional Australia.
Dyson has received $50,000 from Eve Kantor and Mark Wootton, regenerative farmers from near Hamilton, who have also agreed to make in-kind donations, including doubling the donations of others. Kantor is Rupert Murdoch’s niece.
Dyson and Hook have also both received $20,000 from the Regional Voices Fund, of which McGowan’s sister, Helen, is a director. The regenerative farming business run by Alasdair MacLeod, a son-in-law of Murdoch, has donated to the fund, MacLeod told Crikey.
There are other interesting comparisons between the candidates that give a sense of how they are seeking to take power.
Dyson has campaigned with the independent senator David Pocock and Heise with Jacqui Lambie, whom she described as “a national treasure”.
Dyson and Hook’s conservative opponents, meanwhile, have both leaned on support from Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, who Tehan says sold out a 300-seat fundraiser in Warrnambool in March and who supported the Nationals candidate for Calare, Sam Farraway, at the Oberon Show in February.
While the source of funding, feel of their campaigns and broad policies are comparable, each regional independent is expected to succeed or fail based on their ability to sell a particularly local vision.
In Cowper, which runs from Port Macquarie to Coffs Harbour on the New South Wales north coast, the Nationals’ Pat Conaghan has a 2.3% margin, cut from 11.9% at the 2022 election. The seat has been in the hands of the Nationals (or their previous iterations) since 1963.
Heise, a nurse, has campaigned on health and education reform, supporting war veterans, improved funding for drug and alcohol support services and better protections for the environment in her electorate.
Hook, described on her Climate 200 bio as a “small farmer”, has campaigned in Calare on cost-of-living pressures including the big supermarket duopoly, affordable housing, climate action and more niche topics (at least to urban voters) such as mobile phone blackspots.
Calare, which takes in Orange, Bathurst and Lithgow in the NSW central west, is held by Andrew Gee, a former Nationals MP who quit the party because of its opposition to an Indigenous voice to parliament and handling of natural disasters. His margin is 9.7%.
Painted green
Dyson and Tehan agree the main local issue in Wannon is the state of the roads, but another creeping point of contention is offshore windfarms.
Tehan is meeting a local anti-offshore wind campaigner – and former mayor – Michael Neoh at Logans beach, a whale sanctuary. Neoh says it is concerning that, unlike Tehan, Dyson has not yet opposed any offshore wind project.
This is not about opposing climate action, Neoh says, as the electorate is dotted with turbines (more than in any other electorate, Tehan says). Instead, he says it’s about protecting the environment.
Dyson does not support offshore wind, saying only that he has not seen enough evidence to properly weigh the merits of any project.
Should the issue tell against him, it may be one of the few ways Tehan can cleave votes from Dyson along the coastal edge of the electorate.
Broadly speaking, voters in Wannon are divided by the Princes Highway: those to the north vote Tehan, those to the south vote Dyson, and the towns on the highway break for one or the other (Warrnambool for Dyson, Colac for Tehan).
Heading off the highway and north from Warrnambool, towards Hamilton, the Dyson corflutes and kelpies gradually give way to more Tehan signs.
In Dunkeld, a tourist town and regional farming centre on the southern edge of the Grampians/Gariwerd national park, Kathy Mibus is sitting behind the counter of a providore, reading Christian White’s The Wife and the Widow.
“I’m a big Dan Tehan fan, he’s done a lot for me and my community,” she says.
She says Tehan supported her son, who is an amputee, and attended a grand final for the Penshurst Football Netball Club, which she is involved with. After the club claimed two flags, Tehan came back to their clubrooms to celebrate.
Mibus and her husband run a mixed farm, with ultra-fine wool and Wagyu cattle. She thinks Dyson appeals to people who are new to the region.
“Since Covid, a lot of sea change and tree change people are coming from the cities, and they have different views to those who are from the country,” Mibus says.
“I don’t know whether we’re complacent, or if the Liberals or Nationals have looked after the farming community, but I don’t actually know what Alex Dyson would do for a farmer.”
Painting Dyson as a Greens candidate in disguise could have an effect, Mibus says, because of an ingrained distrust of their politics.
Mibus lists concerns about opposition to mulesing and plans to introduce dingoes into national parks, thrusting her finger towards the front of the shop and up at the imposing face of Mount Abrupt as she talks.
“As a farmer, greenies want a lot of our practices which are detrimental to our livestock,” she says.
An anti-politician
Dyson, a former Triple J presenter whose unique 2019 campaign video first drew public attention, finds the various rumours and scare campaigns amusing as much as frustrating.
He asks if we can photograph him eating a chicken parmigiana at the Cally hotel in Hamilton, “because they’re spreading rumours that I’m a vegan now”.
Dyson sees these tactics as representative of the major parties’ failures to take governing seriously; if they spent less time on political gamesmanship and instead prioritised their constituents, perhaps independents would not look so appealing, he argues.
In this way, Dyson seeks to portray himself as somewhat of an anti-politician. He says he is not interested in being the sort of politician most voters consider them to be.
He says he wants to give people a sense of optimism and empowerment, that their vote matters.
He repeats something Cathy McGowan told him during a visit to Wannon: “The great thing about being an independent is that you’re never in opposition, you’re there to make legislation better.”
Later that evening, Tehan and Dyson see each other for the first time during the campaign, when both appear at a Footy for Climate forum at a local oval.
Tehan arrives last, driving a LandCruiser towing a trailer emblazoned with election regalia that looks as if it could be used for transporting greyhounds (Dyson is driving an orange Tesla, matching the colour of his campaign, lent by a supporter).
While Dyson and the Labor candidate, Fiona Mackenzie, are standing on the edges of a footy clinic, watching kids kick the ball around with AFLW premiership captain and local Emma Kearney and Melbourne Demons ruckman Tom Campbell, Tehan runs straight in.
It shows the wily instincts of a veteran campaigner – though Tehan narrowly avoids a Scott Morrison moment in a marking contest.
‘Well, you’ve got my vote, mate’
Wannon is not a particularly culturally diverse electorate, but there is enormous diversity in how people make a living and in the distribution of wealth.
Take the difference between Colac, a town built on farming and logging on the Princes Highway an hour west of Geelong, and Lorne, a tourism hotspot on the Great Ocean Road where Sydney pub baron Justin Hemmes opened his first venue outside NSW.
They may be only 40 minutes apart, but they have very little in common. The median house price in Colac is $470,000. In Lorne, it’s $1.8m.
How the candidates straddle these groups of voters, the well-heeled who can vote on discretionary issues and those who are struggling to make ends meet, could decide the seat.
Dyson is focusing a little more on the latter as the campaign window narrows, though he has been actively campaigning since August.
The day after his parma in a Hamilton pub, Dyson is two hours away, knocking on doors in Stewart Street, Colac.
The street has more Australia flags than Dyson signs, but he says that of the 29 houses whose door he knocked on that afternoon most of those inside were receptive, despite being “apolitical and disillusioned in general”.
He is with two of his 650 volunteers, including local Siobhan, who is campaigning for him in the first election she can vote in.
Dyson says he tries to be nothing but authentic with the public.
“I may be naive and not able to change anything, but I’ve got to be able to try,” he says.
He says one man told him: “Politicians, I’ve given up on them, they’re all crooks.”
Dyson says he told him he was a comedian, spoke to him about his garden, and gradually worked him round. As he left, the man said: “Well, you’ve got my vote, mate.”
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This article was amended on 2 April 2025. An earlier version said the electorate of Calare took in Dubbo. It takes in part of the Dubbo Regional Council local government area, but not the city of Dubbo itself.
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