A grass roots campaign set Cathy McGowan apart in Indi, writes Barrie Cassidy.

This scene from a florist shop at Rutherglen in North East Victoria may well capture the beginnings of grass roots politics like we have never seen before in this country.

Nine days before the federal election, 15 people wearing the distinctive orange and black t-shirts of the Independent candidate for Indi, Cathy McGowan, walked into Carla Walsh's shop in High Street and bought $400 worth of flowers.

The group was acting out an idea called cash mobbing. They targeted Walsh's shop because she had written a letter to the Weekly Times bemoaning a lack of consumer confidence.

The cash mob gets together to spend money collectively at small businesses and then promotes the idea on social media.

This time though, it was as much a political as a community exercise.

The organiser, Cambell Klose, first came across the practice on a visit to the United States.

As a supporter of McGowan's bid for Indi, he proposed the fusing of community action, social media and political activism.

It was just one of many unorthodox approaches to the 2013 campaign in Indi that brought about the most unlikely result.

What set Indi apart from other successful runs by independents is that it was driven by the grass roots, and not by the candidate.

In the past, almost without exception, an elected independent either had a big local profile, or was an established politician defecting from another party.

Cathy McGowan's history is very different. It was never about her.

McGowan won voter support because people in Indi had become fed up with the system.

For all the talk about a flawed Senate, it's the system that elects members to the House of Representatives that annoys so many across the country.

Only about 20 per cent of Australians who live in marginal seats genuinely decide who will govern the country.

The rest who vote in safe seats - the other 80 per cent - effectively have no say.

It was that sense of being disenfranchised and taken for granted, that drove a small group of people to get together early this year for an informal meeting at Wangaratta Library.

Cam Klose, and a colleague, Nick Haines, have since written that the alienation from events in Canberra "and the ugliest and most negative period in the country’s history" filled them with despair.

They wrote : "This motley group of various political colours became Voice for Indi, and their goal was to start a conversation...about needs, values and political leadership".

During April and May the group organised 55 structured kitchen table style conversations, drawing 425 people, an extraordinary result in a rural community.

Eventually, participants hit on the idea of nominating an independent to run against the Liberal's Sophie Mirabella, who had held the seat since 2001, and once recorded 63 per cent of the primary vote.

They started headhunting prominent locals.

Klose and Haines wrote: "While there was widespread support for the idea, many people expressed anxiety about taking on the vast party machine Sophie Mirabella had behind her. Given (her) aggressive style, it was felt that personal and professional reputations would be treated as fair game."

But eventually McGowan stepped up.

The campaign was given national attention when independent, Tony Windsor, was asked on Insiders what he would miss the least about federal politics. He nominated Sophie Mirabella.

That quip made front page news in the Border Mail, the district’s largest newspaper. The story also attracted the attention of national commentators whose views, often uncomplimentary to Mirabella, were read by the locals on twitter and Facebook.

McGowan was also helped because Labor and Greens voters who had never before had any influence, saw an opportunity to take out a Coalition sitting member.

Many National Party supporters got behind her as well, some of them motivated by a Liberal preference deal that went against the Nationals in the Victorian seat of Mallee.

Ken Jasper, a retired National Party member who held the state seat of Murray Valley for 34 years, publicly backed McGowan.

He said he did so because a sitting member’s first obligation is to the electorate, and he felt Mirabella had failed to recognise that.

The McGowan campaign had its critics.

One of them, Nicola Bussell, a lamb producer from Carboor, paid for an open letter to be published in the Border Mail, the Wangaratta Chronicle and the Benalla Ensign.

In that letter Bussell wrote of Mirabella that she "doesn't shy away from conflict or skirt around sensitive issues, preferring to call a spade a spade, the old fashioned way."

Bussell argued that Mirabella, as a member of the Coalition would be part of a future government, while McGowan, in the absence of a hung parliament, would be a backbencher with limited clout.

On ABC News Breakfast Thursday, Virginia Trioli put it to McGowan that "you won’t be a kingmaker independent in minority government...you'll just be another vote".

McGowan responded: "There is no 'just' attached to being a member of parliament. I will be the member for Indi, a voice for the electorate."

And in a direct message to the Coalition, she said : "You should have seen this coming, guys."

That surely serves as a warning to the occupants of safe seats everywhere on both sides of politics. Work the turf, no matter how safe the seat. If you don't, another McGowan might be just around the corner.

Having a vote that counts for nothing is no fun. Finding a way to make it count has been a lot of fun for the Voice of Indi, and it just might catch on.

Barrie Cassidy is the presenter of Insiders and Offsiders on ABC1. View his full profile here.