The new breed

It’s a Wednesday morning in late November and I’m sitting in a classroom at St Joseph’s Primary School, Molong, about an hour’s drive north-west of Bathurst. Peter Andren, the independent federal member for Calare, is telling a room full of attentive grade four, five and six students about parliament, political parties and how he goes about representing the electorate. Returned to Canberra with an extraordinary 15 per cent swing three weeks earlier, he is emphasising the importance of independent MPs in the parliamentary process. But when the kids start asking questions it’s not long before terrorism and asylum seekers come up. [Introduction]