By Kat Wong and Andrew Brown in Canberra

Australians are growing increasingly frustrated at the political duopoly, and independent senator Fatima Payman hopes her new party will ease their discontent.

The ex-Labor politician unveiled Australia’s Voice on Wednesday and said it would run candidates at the next federal election, due by May 2025.

The political party will stand up for the “disenfranchised and the unheard”, Senator Payman said.

“So many of you have told me with emotions in your hearts that we need something different, we need a voice,” she told reporters in Canberra.

“(Australians) are fed up of the two major parties playing politics and being afraid of making any form of progressive reform.

“It is this cry for change that has brought us here today.”

Formal policies have not yet been announced, but Senator Payman has stressed she is not forming a faith-based party.

Senator Payman, who was elected as a Labor candidate in 2022, quit the party in July over differing views on Palestine and has since served in the upper house as an independent.

She is far from the first senator to break-off and start a new party, with Jacqui Lambie, Pauline Hanson and Gerard Rennick all preceding her.

But the barriers to victory have grown as Australia’s party system has become more crowded, according to election analyst Ben Raue.

Parties founded by senators can get a boost through name recognition, however, they don’t have deep roots – often lacking members and presence in local areas.

There are also concerns Australia’s Voice will find it difficult to differentiate itself from the Greens, but Mr Raue suggests there is potential for the party in the progressive space.

“The Greens are the inner-city party of the educated middle class,” he told AAP.

The party has previously tried to target seats in more multicultural and lower-income communities but “there’s a cultural misfit that doesn’t quite work”.

“It’s possible that someone like (Senator Payman) could attract votes in places like that – not just among Muslim voters – but amongst a bunch of communities that aren’t white, that are under-represented, that maybe feel taken for granted by Labor,” Mr Raue said.

“It would actually be less about her competing with the Greens … and more about her being able to peel off Labor’s (voters).”

The party hasn’t decided where it will focus its campaign or whether it will take aim at the upper or lower house.

If it is just an attempt to get Senator Payman re-elected, then efforts will likely concentrate on Western Australia.

But that seems unlikely as the 29-year-old will not be up for re-election until the expected 2028 contest.

The party’s best opportunities lie with disaffected Labor voters in the mid-to-outer suburbs of Melbourne and Sydney, Mr Raue said.

“Labor’s already under attack from the Greens on certain angles and if she is able to attract these voters in different places where the Greens don’t do as well – that could be interesting,” he said.

Payman promises ‘full body contact’ party