'Disillusioned': meet the ordinary Australians opening their wallets for independents

She's 74, still does some relief teaching to supplement her pension, and has six grandchildren.

"I don't want to be on my deathbed and say I haven't done anything," she said.

"I want people who do the hard physical labor of giving us food and doing that sort of work to have a voice."

Ms Mears, who raised three boys as a single parent, lives in Kingston in the electorate of Franklin south of Hobart, which is held by Labor's Julie Collins on a healthy margin of 13.7 per cent.

But the local Climate 200-backed independent, Peter George, is making inroads.

"I won't call them the major parties; I'll call them the old parties," Ms Mears said.

"They're not listening to [us] ... I think they are being governed by big businesses, big corporations."

She cares deeply about the environmental impact of salmon farming in her state, an industry Prime Minister Anthony Albanese loudly and proudly supports.

Ms Mears said giving money to the Regional Voices Fund, which is helping finance the campaigns of independent candidates in non-city seats, was a push for change.

"I actually wanted people who would act on my behalf and hear my voice," she said.

Climate 200 is the driving financial force behind the so-called "teal" movement (a badge some interpret as a mix of a conservative - Liberal - blue economic outlook and "green" focus on climate change).

In the 2022 election, the fundraising vehicle helped get high-profile Sydney and Melbourne-based independents Allegra Spender, Dr Monique Ryan, Dr Sophie Scamps, and Zoe Daniel elected - and Zali Steggall re-elected - fundamentally changing the face of federal parliament.

In the lead up to the May 3 poll, it's backing 35 independents, 19 of them in regional and rural seats.

But a new player entered the game this election in the form of the Regional Voices Fund, which is funding 13 candidates so far.

Its director is Helen McGowan, sister of former independent MP Cathy McGowan - arguably the original teal - who won the Victorian regional seat of Indi from the Liberal party in 2013.

The fund has some high profile donors, including actor and farmer Rachel Ward - wife of Bryan Brown - and Macdoch, a farming business run by Rupert Murdoch's son-in-law Alasdair MacLeod.

For Geoff Cobain, 68, donating to Regional Voices is about helping break the two party system.

"Like a lot of people, I'm pretty disillusioned with the two party duopoly - just the choice of Libs or Labs," the resident of Sale, in Victoria's south east, said.

In his very safe Nationals seat, held by Darren Chester, he feels ignored.

"Where I live in the electorate of Gippsland, it's really not a contest at all," Mr Cobain said.

"Whoever the National party preselects will be elected and the National party don't bother about Gippsland much because they know they've got it in the bag - and Labor don't really bother because they know they can't win it."

Mr Cobain said he had never been a member of a political party but had, in recent years, become disillusioned enough to take out his wallet to support something new.

He donates $20 a time, here and there, to Regional Voices.

Meanwhile Sam Noble, more than 30 years Mr Cobain's junior, gave $100 to the cause from his meager student income.

Mr Noble, from Bowraville on the NSW mid north coast, is retraining to be a doctor after careers in nursing and law.

"Certainly my electorate is considered a retirement kind of electorate," he said of the marginal seat of Cowper, where independent Caz Heise (funded by both Climate 200 and Regional Voices) is giving Nationals MP Pat Conaghan a run for his money.

But the demographic was changing, he said.

"Definitely when I was growing up, very National, very traditional kind of values, but it's really become much more diversified, very much more multicultural - still very Anglo-centric, but more multicultural," Mr Noble said.

"And I think COVID really helped generate this change, like people from more urban centres coming in, and that's really helping shift things."

Now that he's returned to university for study and is surrounded by people in their 20s, he's worried for them.

"If they're being taxed to the point where their quality of life decreases, and we've become this corporate state that supports corporations, well, is that the kind of society we want to live in?

"Because we live in societies, not economies."

Housing affordability and tax reform are Mr Noble's main bugbears.

But for Joyce Erceg in Western Australia, supporting the independents is more about process than issues.

"Whatever the issues are, the regional people get a better hearing if there are independents there because they make more of a thing of going and talking to people on the ground; it's more grassroots," the 68-year-old said.

Ms Erceg, who's been moved from Canning (marginal Liberal) to Burt (safe Labor) with a redistribution, has donated to both Climate 200 and Regional Voices.

She grew up on a farm and, like Mr Noble, believes regional areas are changing.

"Maybe there's been an assumption that regional voices are what they were decades ago, but I think the makeup of the population has changed," she said.

"And so there needs to be kind of a new listening process to see who they really are and what they're really thinking.

"And I don't think it's been done."

Independents, she said, take what "people on the ground are saying" to Canberra, rather than forcing Canberra ideas on the electorate.

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