Seven politicians that famously switched sides

Independents are rare, due in part to the difficulties of getting elected without a party organization to provide funding and support. But not everyone who gets elected stays a representative of their party. Switching sides is always a big deal and at times has actually changed the course of the country and its government.

Here are seven examples of politicians who jumped ship.

Pauline Hanson 1996-97

The Liberal Party disendorsed Liberal candidate Pauline Hanson in 1996 for her views on the abolition of special aid to Indigenous Australians. 

In 1997 Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party launched. One Nation won around 8% of the vote at the federal election of 1998, and elected only a single Senator. Hanson herself lost her seat in parliament, and it seemed for a time the party was over.

After a period in prison, and time in and out of One Nation, Hanson was elected to the Senate in 2016 along with three other One Nation candidates. Hanson’s party switch, albeit one imposed on her, turned out to be the best move of her career.

Jacqui Lambie 2014-15

Another former independent, Jacqui Lambie’s career was aided twice by a switch to a different party colour. A former Australian Army corporal, Lambie was a member of the Labor and Liberal parties in Tasmania before deciding to enter politics as an independent. Choosing to seek a position in the Senate, Lambie had to sell her house to raise the money to run, but found an unlikely savior in businessman Clive Palmer.

Palmer had launched his new Palmer United Party and was looking for candidates, an offer Lambie willingly accepted. She was elected to the Senate at the election of 2013, joining three other PUP senators, along with Palmer himself in the Lower House.

Initially part of a crossbench holding the balance of power, clashes between the PUP members led to its disintegration. Lambie was the first to leave, resigning on 24 November 2014, less than a year into her term. She continued in the Senate as an independent, but in April the following year registered her own party, the Jacqui Lambie Network. Her former PUP colleague Glenn Lazarus took a similar tack when he resigned from the party in March 2015, forming the Glenn Lazarus Team.

Under her party’s banner, Lambie was re-elected in the double dissolution of 2016 (Lazarus was not) with 8% of the vote. Unfortunately for Lambie, she was found to be ineligible for office in 2017, being a dual British/Australian citizen. After a year out of politics, Lambie returned to the Senate in 2019, again under the JLN flag.

Bob Katter 2001-11

Always a maverick, the famously loquacious and controversial Bob Katter Jr had a family history of party-switching. His father, Bob Katter Sr had been a member of the Labor Party in the 1950s, before falling out with them during the aforementioned Split and joining the Country Party.

Katter Jr followed in his father’s footsteps, being a National Party member of the Queensland Parliament, a minister in the Coalition state government and, from 1993, the Nationals federal member for Kennedy. 

Katter increasingly felt out-of-place in the Nationals and the Coalition and was often at odds with party leadership on social and economic issues. In 2001, Katter resigned from the National Party to run for Kennedy as an independent.

He won, and was easily re-elected in 2004, 2007 and 2010. After the 2010 election he was one of the rural independents who determined the minority government in the hung parliament – Katter backed the Coalition, as opposed to his colleagues Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, who backed Labor.

In 2011, Katter made headlines yet again when he launched his new party, Katter’s Australian Party. At the 2012 Queensland election, Katter’s party won two seats, and increased that number to three in 2017. While small, the party has wielded influence in Queensland rural politics, and as of 2020 are the third-largest party in the Legislative Assembly.

Katter, under his own banner, was re-elected to parliament three more times. In February 2020, Katter relinquished leadership to his son, Robbie.

Finally in 2018, after a brief flirtation with the Liberal Democrats, Latham announced he was joining One Nation, and that he would be the party’s leader in New South Wales.

The following year he was elected to the NSW Legislative Council for One Nation, making him not only one of a very small number of leaders to switch parties, but one of the few federal politicians to go into state politics.