Inside the senate beyond the cross bench

But this doesn’t mean solely concentrating on the six new, much talked about cross-benchers.

The other six new Senators (three Coalition, two Labor and one Green) deserve equivalent attention. And the 12 departing Senators, either retired or defeated, also matter.

The six new cross-benchers have already been afforded remarkable publicity. Jacquie Lambie (PUP, Tasmania), David Leyonhjelm (Liberal Democrats, NSW), Ricky Muir (Motoring Enthusiasts Party, Victoria) and Bob Day (Family First, SA) have attracted extraordinary limelight. They have already had personal profiles in the press and/or interviews on national television. Dio Wang (PUP, WA) and Glenn Lazarus (PUP Senate leader, Queensland) have been somewhat quieter.

The six have become virtual household names, perhaps better known than the new Senate president, Stephen Parry of Tasmania, who was elected on Monday. Certainly they are now better known than some of the retiring senators, of whom the best known was probably 30-year veteran Ron Boswell (Nationals, Qld).

Others, including the former Senate president, John Hogg, the retiring Western Australian Liberal, Alan Eggleston, and Ursula Stephens, a parliamentary secretary in the previous Labor government, had long, substantial careers, but are now less recognised than Lambie or Muir. The same may be even more true of most of the other eight, including the so-called Labor ‘'faceless man’', Don Farrell from South Australia.

Several themes have emerged. The first is a perception, generated mainly by Muir and Lambie, of a mix of eccentricity, ordinariness and outrageousness.

The second, produced mainly by the small-government libertarians, Day and Leyonhjelm, is of highly political and articulate advocates for their causes. These two seem well-prepared, even cocky, about their abilities. Leyonhjelm referred to the training week for new senators as “Senate kindy” in a way that showed he can deal confidently with the media.

The third is the self-projected image that they are so-called real Australians, who, in Day’s words, have held a real job, unlike those in the major parties (including the Greens). This image should be subjected to scrutiny. They are a varied lot, including an engineer, a soldier, a professional footballer and a businessman. Day calls himself a former plumber but he is, in reality, a wealthy builder who has poured lots of his own money into his campaigns.

Several of them have actually led highly political lives and even previously stood for major party pre-selection. There are previous Liberal connections. Day, Leyonhjelm and Lambie have all been Liberal members. There is no mistaking that this cross-bench is a product of the fraying at the edges of the Coalition parties. The same was true of Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott in the last Parliament and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party last century.

Despite the publicity generated by these six, political life will be harder for them from now on. The pressure will be greater and the publicity may turn nastier. Independent Nick Xenophon and John Madigan (DLP) have handled this pressure pretty well, but it all got too much for Stephen Fielding, the previous Family First senator, when his vote proved decisive.

What of the other six newcomers? Do they fit Day’s negative stereotype of major party senators? Certainly they have “trod a well-worn path”, because they are embedded in their parties.

Janet Rice was a founding member of the Victorian Greens in 1992. The two Labor senators, Joe Bullock and Chris Ketter, have both been state secretaries of the Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Union (SDA). The three new Coalition senators are very much products of their party’s machine. Matthew Canavan and Linda Reynolds both served as a ministerial chief of staff in Canberra (Canavan to Barnaby Joyce in Opposition and Reynolds to the Minister of Customs during the Howard government) and Reynolds was also deputy federal director. The third, James McGrath, was also deputy director of the federal Liberals and later state secretary of the LNP in Queensland. He ran Campbell Newman’s successful state election campaign.

But the question of whether they have had so-called real jobs is vexed. A lot depends on what counts and that is subjective. Being a union official is a real job, but Labor certainly injects too many union secretaries into the Senate for its own good. Furthermore, when parliamentarians enter, like Bullock, aged nearly 60 years, it makes generational change in the party difficult. Rice has run her own community facilitation consultancy for many years and rose to be mayor of Maribyrnong council in Melbourne. Linda Reynolds served for more than 30 years in the Army Reserve and rose to the rank of brigadier. Canavan has some experience outside politics, but McGrath is much more the consummate political professional.

All six will play very different roles in parliament to the cross-benchers. In the short-term they will vote with their parties or suffer the consequences. They will do so by inclination, however, not because of discipline. They will serve their time in relative obscurity unless they step out of line and cross the floor.

But in the longer term their future should be bright. They should be the hope of their parties. Most of them should have long careers beyond six years. Importantly they may become much better known in the future as parliamentary office-holders, ministers and even party leaders of some sort. So don’t discount the longer-term contribution of those from the bigger parties.

John Warhurst is an emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University.

John.Warhurst@anu.edu.au