The Senate cross bench remains in the limelight as the parliamentary year draws to a close. The negotiations necessary for government bills to pass through the Senate mean that barely a day goes by without half a dozen of the 10 remaining cross benchers being interviewed.
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Old hands such as Jacqui Lambie, David Leyonhjelm and Nick Xenophon speak with additional confidence and assurance of their place at the heart of things. Newcomers such as Derryn Hinch and Pauline Hanson attract equal attention. Malcolm Roberts from One Nation has his days, too. Only the junior NXT senators seem not to have made much of a public mark, at least here in Canberra.
Senator Bob Day may have resigned in disgrace and One Nation's Rodney Culleton is representing himself energetically but erratically before the High Court, but that just adds to the quirky mix. To say they are a mixed bag is an understatement.
Some of the more junior Coalition, Labor and Green senators may be just as interesting. But their public personalities are curtailed by being locked into a traditional parliamentary party game in which they generally defer to their leaders and to party discipline.
The crossbench menagerie includes various emphases and points of view. All that is really lacking is a wild leftie unrestrained by Labor/Green discipline. But to say that it is generally conservative doesn't adequately capture its unpredictability. They cannot be properly categorised using our traditional left-right labels.
Many of their predilections leave me cold but I've grown comfortable with their place in the Senate and appreciative of their disconcerting presence in the political sausage factory. They each have their flaws, some of them serious, but they make a generally positive contribution to public discussion and to ultimate legislative outcomes. We are better off for their existence.
Recall the many different elements in their contributions seen over the past couple of weeks.
Lambie has gumption and a straight-talking style. It was a pleasure to watch her in a committee hearing taking no nonsense from corporate representatives who were trying to use economic gobbledegook to defend the impact on struggling farmers of $1 per litre milk in the big supermarkets.
Hinch is cheerful and combative with an easy, and relaxed demeanour. Someone needed to shake up the faux formality of the parliamentary chambers. He has continued his campaign against child sex abusers and contributed to opening Senate proceedings to scrutiny through long-delayed television coverage.
Leyonhjelm conducts himself with rather studied airs and graces but the overall effect is urbane and cultivated despite his gun-toting proclivities. He may be overplaying his role as a bridge between the government and the Labor/Greens but someone certainly needs to fill this gap. His libertarian anti-government views sometimes cut refreshingly across the major parties' traditional approach.
Xenophon may have been tarnished by his leap from lone Independent to party leader. Cracks have emerged now in his seemingly innocent persona, and he now looks more self-interested. But he remains a voice for some good causes, like whistle-blowers and open government, and for protection for depressed regions such as his native South Australia. And he is also an experienced activist for compromise and a skilled negotiator of amendments to government legislation.
Hanson and her party are hardest to categorise. They still look like a mad bunch of eccentrics, and their extremist follies should never be forgotten. They welcomed Donald Trump's election with champagne on the parliamentary forecourt but this was more a media gesture than a clear statement of where they really stand on policy details.
Hanson herself is over-exposed and yet to evolve beyond a caricature of herself built up over 20 years in public life. Her team members are still finding their way but have certainly revealed a worrying adherence to conspiracy theories.
This is a Senate cross-bench that Malcolm Turnbull and the Greens tried to eliminate through the combination of Senate reform and a double dissolution.
But its presence has been now accepted by the media and by the major parties in a way its predecessor never was between 2014 and 2016. Three developments have contributed to this more balanced sentiment.
The incoming cross bench senators, especially Ricky Muir and Lambie, got caught up during 2014 in the prevailing media and major party prejudice against minority government, which had been escalating since 2010. They were subjected to unfair and juvenile attacks on their character in a way major party senators never were. That anti-cross bench sentiment seems to have transformed somewhat into recognising them as legitimate constraints on executive government.
The weakness of the Turnbull government has also benefited this cross-bench. The government hubris of 2013-2015, exemplified by Tony Abbott and Joe Hockey, has faded as this government is mired in uncertainty and failure. It is impossible now to portray it as an efficient outfit whose good policy ideas are being derailed by a recalcitrant Senate. On the contrary they need all the help they can get, including from the cross benchers.
Finally the Trump victory means that no one in media or government is certain of right or wrong anymore and so-called insiders in the major parties are not accorded unearned deference.
The government will have its victories, defeats and delays in this final parliamentary session. The victories will be hard-won and often compromised. The defeats will be accepted as an inevitable consequence of the prevailing Senate numbers. Some good policies won't survive but fortunately some bad policies will be jettisoned.
This situation will be mourned by few observers because the parliament is a better place for the presence of the cross benchers.
John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University.
