Former Labor senator Fatima Payman's new political party could seek to run upper house candidates in the ACT under a party banner aimed at luring disaffected voters fed up with two-party politics.
The independent senator announced the formation of the Australia's Voice party on Wednesday, after days of speculation.
The 29-year-old did not reveal any formal policies or specify where candidates would run, but it's understood upper house candidates would run across every state with a few in marginal lower house seats.
"Australians are fed up with the major parties having a duopoly, a stranglehold over our democracy. If we need to drag the two major parties kicking and screaming to do what needs to be done, we will do it," Senator Payman told reporters in Canberra.
"We can no longer sit by while our voices are founded by the same old politics, it's time to stand up, to rise together and to take control of our future."
The first-term Western Australian senator became the first Labor member to vote against the party's position in decades, after voting with Greens to support a motion to recognise Palestinian statehood.
Since resigning from the caucus, she has represented WA from the cross bench and has grown increasingly vocal over her criticisms towards Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as well as Labor's stance on the war in Gaza.
Senator Payman said Australia's Voice would set itself apart from other progressive platforms like the Greens by adopting a more realistic approach to policy issues such as housing affordability, student debt and aged care reform.
"I've heard from Australians that they think that sometimes the Greens go way too far and that when it comes to practicality or pragmatism there needs to be that level of engagement with what's possible and what can be achieved," she said.
She would not agree with suggestions her party would run on a centrist platform, and declared she had consulted with Indigenous communities, noting that some First Nations elders had said they felt they had been treated as electoral poison after the referendum.
"We cannot afford to leave Indigenous affairs and Indigenous issues off the agenda just because there was a failed referendum," she said.
Sources close to Senator Payman conceded there would be a "snowflake's chance in hell" of a newcomer beating out territory-favourite David Pocock, but said "all options were on the table" in regards to running a candidate in the ACT.
Senator Payman also threatened to target Mr Albanese's seat of Grayndler after the Prime Minister challenged her to resign from the Senate during an interview with the Australian Financial Review on Monday.
She is currently in the middle of her term and will not be up for re-election until 2028.
While Senator Payman has yet to secure financial donors or select any candidates, she revealed a number of individuals have put their name forward and declared she would seek people across "all backgrounds".
"We are not ruling anyone out," she said.
