Just 12 of the 151 members of the House of Representatives represent their communities – the old-fashioned idea of democracy.

You’re a mug if you think the other 139 represent the people who elect them.

They don’t. They stand for their political party first, foremost and always. They vote the way their party tells them to vote. They owe their job (i.e. their preselection and income) to the party. Their hopes of advancement, a bigger salary, power, depend on pleasing the party – not their electorate.

So they do whatever their party tells them to do, with rare exception. (Yes, I’m looking at you, Bridget Archer, and now Fatima Payman, though the Senate is a little different. I’ll come to that.)

The Teal revolution two years ago was caused by several communities waking up to the fact that bumping a “moderate” Liberal up to Parliament was the same as endorsing Barnaby Joyce and Scott Morrison.

The same reality will apply at the next election – whoever the local Coalition or Labor candidate might be, you’re electing Peter Dutton or Anthony Albanese.

You can quibble around the edges about who those 12 actual elected representatives might be, as opposed to the elected party hacks.

There are the obvious 10 who won or retained seats as independents in 2020 – Andrew Wilkie, Helen Haines, Zali Steggall, Kate Chaney, Zoe Daniel, Monique Ryan, Sophie Scamps, Allegra Spender, Kylea Tink and Dai Le.

Rebekha Sharkie is the sole representative of Centre Alliance, the band formerly known as the Nick Xenophon Team. That kinda makes her independent.

Bob Katter is Katter’s Australian Party. If anyone has noticed a difference between his vote and the National Party’s, they must have very good eyesight, but Bob basically represents Bob so I suppose idiosyncrasy is a form of independence.

Andrew Gee sits as an independent, having resigned from the National Party on principle over the Voice. Russell Broadbent sits as an independent, having resigned from the Liberal Party because he lost preselection.

Maybe Andrew Gee would make the list 13, maybe not. His electorate will decide that next year. So for now, it’s 12 representatives of their electorates in the House of Representatives, with Bridget Archer the exception who makes the rule for the 139 party animals.

And now the Australian Electoral Commission looks set to wipe out one of the 12 – proposing to abolish the federation seat of North Sydney, held by Kylea Tink.

I shall declare vested interest here: I live in North Sydney, MCed a pre-election event for Kylea and voted for her. My dog told me I had to – there were important issues he and I both felt strongly about where the Coalition was failing the nation.

I also like the idea of the balance of power potentially being held by a band of intelligent, accomplished individuals, people who haven’t been party hacks and political wannabes since school. People whose primary allegiance is to their electorate – not whatever factional knuckle draggers hold sway over their branch of either party.

I like the idea of people of principle and conscience representing me to “keep the bastards honest”, as Don Chipp once purposed the Australian Democrats.

For me, the great disappointment of the major political tribes is their lack of desire to have a crack at realising Australia’s magnificent potential.

On one side, the Coalition is charting an increasingly populist, nativist path, veering further Right, taking whatever fear and outrage it picks up in its focus groups and feeding it back to the electorate. Under Peter Dutton, the LNP has turned Trumpy, its nuclear balloon an example of lies as political strategy.

On the other, Labor seems only to aspire to be a little better than the Coalition. A timid government, as evidenced by the May budget, Albo still running his “small target” strategy.

A yardstick? Faced with the housing crisis, Labor is too scared, too timid, too inconsequential to include among its initiatives the mildest of no-brainer little policy changes by limiting negative gearing to new builds.

“No! Don’t mention ‘negative gearing’ or those mean Murdoch myrmidons will write nasty stories.”

(Memo Albo – those Murdoch people will write nasty stories about Labor whatever you do.)

Housing, for mine the worst domestic policy failure of the past three decades, a genuine disaster with ramifications across society and business, is being met with Labor aspiring to do little more than maintain the status quo while the Coalition aspires to much less, to worsen the crisis, increase prices and reward those already blessed with property ownership.

Housing is one of the issues the member actually representing the people of North Sydney has been campaigning on, most recently co-sponsoring with Senator David Pocock a bill to require housing to be treated as a human right for Australians.

Genuine independents representing their communities just might apply the necessary pressure to achieve less timid policy on a number of fronts – the issues of climate, integrity and equality that are the core Teal values, reflecting their communities.

Along the way, I’ve seen Ms Tink and her team work harder to connect with their community than any other MP I’ve experienced.

But now the Australian Electoral Commission intends to scrap North Sydney as part of a redistribution brought about by varying rates of population growth.

For mine, the AEC is looking in the rear-view mirror, rather than ahead. North Sydney is slated for rapid population growth, the North Sydney Council area alone expecting nearly 20,000 new residents by 2036.

There also is something like a cohesive political identity in the seat dating from the role of Ted Mack, the “father of independents”, who held the state seat from 1981 to 1988 and federal seat from 1990 to 1996, resigning from both to avoid receiving rich parliamentary pensions.

A Ted Mack quote leads Ms Tink’s policy overview: “The very basis of democracy is that a decision taken by the public as a whole will be right more often than decisions taken by an elite group.”

Maybe North Sydney should apply for a Heritage Order to preserve it, both as one of the original electorates in 1901 and its Ted Mack independent ethos.

The Senate is different. Voting for individuals in the upper house is rare – David Pocock, Jacqui Lambie and Pauline Hanson are exceptions though two of those three are there via party machines. Should a Senator die or resign, their replacement is chosen by the political party, not the electorate.

Nonetheless, the travails of Senator Fatima Payman demonstrate the insidious nature of being held to represent a political party rather than the electorate – or even one’s own principles and conscience.

Polonius’s advice has not aged:

This above all: To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

To deprive a person of the right to act according to their informed conscience is unconscionable.

In Senator Payman’s case, punishing her for preferring her conscience and Labor Party policy to Labor caucus politics is another strong argument for independents.

The childishness of the “don’t speak to her” freeze demeans the Labor Party, just as the treatment of Julia Banks did the Liberal Party.

Or maybe it just demonstrates the nature of the beasts.

Vale North Sydney.

P.S. Will Doug Cameron’s ALP branch be expelled?