Wodonga event for The Indi Way book highlighting independent shift

Democracy group Voices for Indi has detailed the successes of MP Helen Haines and her predecessor Cathy McGowan through its book The Indi Way, which was released at the start of May.

With the selection of Ms McGowan as its independent candidate for the 2013 federal election, Voices for Indi hoped to make one of the safest Liberal seats in the nation marginal, but ultimately won it.

She repeated the feat in 2016, before Dr Haines made history as the first independent in the Australian parliament to succeed a retiring independent MP in 2019, and was returned at last year's federal election.

A book tour started in Melbourne on May 16 and was followed by trips to Benalla and Wangaratta, before stopping in Wodonga on May 19.

Dr Haines is opening the event at Wodonga's Church St Hotel, with discussion by Ms McGowan with three of the book's 12 authors, Denis Ginnivan, Alana Johnson, and Cam Klose.

"The idea began pretty much straight after Cathy won the first election (in 2013)," Voices for Indi member Amanda Aldous said.

"We knew we had a story back then and we collected some reflections and anecdotes from the community immediately after that election and continued to do so as each election happened.

"The story evolved along the way and we had a few attempts at it and then finally focused more on it about three-and-a-half years ago.

"As you can imagine, getting a cohesive story from 12 different authors is not that easy and we're really grateful to our publishers and the editors that have helped us along the way.

"We're getting good feedback and the launch events have been at capacity."

Two years ago, the community rallied to raise more than $30,000 through donations to fund the publication.

"Without that, we would not have been able to work with the professional editors and get it to a draft manuscript stage, which we were then able to pitch to some publishers," Ms Aldous said.

"Because the community has such a sense of connection and ownership of this story, and so many of them are reflected in the book, people are really enjoying reliving and remembering some of it, but also get excited about the opportunities that are still presenting.

"The Indi Way has become a bit of catch phrase for us and speaks to the way we do things a bit differently here."

Voices for Indi will host further book launches in Canberra on May 24 and Sydney on June 18.

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