On current counting, the Coalition can rely on having 34 seats in the 76-seat upper house. It might win 35 - there is a fair prospect it will get one additional seat in the Sunshine State.

But it will still need 39 seats to get laws passed - 39 being the magic number for a majority in the upper house. At most, it will end up with 35 seats and so to have a majority, it will need to rely on the support of four or five crossbenchers, depending on the outcome of that final seat in Queensland.

Four or five doesn't sound like much of a difference but the crossbench is smaller in this new parliament and garnering support on each and every issue could be a complicated business.

For the past three years, the Coalition government was dealing with a large and turbulent Senate crossbench. Fraser Anning changed parties not once but twice after falling out with One Nation's Pauline Hanson and then getting expelled from Queensland MP Bob Katter's party.

Brian Burston also fell out with Senator Hanson and joined Clive Palmer's party. Nick Xenophon and David Leyonhjelm both quit to pursue state politics - unsuccessfully - and handed the reins to their respective staffers and proteges.

As of July 1, Senators Anning and Burston will be gone. So will South Australian independent Tim Storer and Mr Leyonhjelm's Liberal Democrat replacement Duncan Spender. Derryn Hinch has a very slim chance of holding on based on late preference flows.

Because senators generally get six-year terms, only 40 of the 76 members were up for election last Saturday, leaving in place some key figures, including Senator Hanson.

The crossbench may shrink from 10 to six senators - one of the smallest of recent parliaments.

Whether a smaller crossbench actually makes life easier for the government hangs on that Queensland seat. If the Liberal-National Party's Gerard Rennick scrapes through as the party's third-place Senate ticket-holder, that gives the Coalition 35 seats, instead of the 34 it was probably expecting immediately after the election.

That will give the government all-important options in negotiating the support it needs from the crossbench to make its legislative agenda happen.

Assuming Labor and the Greens oppose a particular piece of legislation, the government would need four of the six crossbenchers to get the bill through the Senate.

Those six will be made up of three conservatives, two centrists and one wildcard.

The conservatives consist of Senator Hanson, her One Nation colleague Malcolm Roberts - who is set to return after resigning from the Senate in 2017 over his former British citizenship - and former Liberal-turned-Australian Conservatives leader Cory Bernardi.

The centrists are the two senators of the Centre Alliance party, Rex Patrick and Stirling Griff, the descendants of Mr Xenophon, who was a skilled crossbench negotiator.

The wildcard is Jacqui Lambie - another previous victim of the citizenship affair who is set to return.

Without that extra Queensland seat, the Coalition would need to win over both the conservatives and the Centre Alliance. They would find that hard on a lot of legislation.

The blocs are not going to agree much on immigration or many social issues. They might agree on some but not all economic issues.

The Centre Alliance also has a strong civil libertarian streak and therefore might be wary of some national security measures that One Nation would love.

Ms Lambie, meanwhile, is unlikely to support things such as cuts to welfare or tax measures that benefit the wealthy. She delivered an election night spray to Prime Minister Scott Morrison, warning him to "drop the attitude" and treat her "a hell of a lot better" than the Coalition did when she was last in Parliament.

Don't be surprised if Ms Lambie and the Centre Alliance look to increase their collective clout by working together.

Between bridging the ideological divides and the personality divides, 34 Senate seats equals hard work for the Coalition. It would deliver enormous influence to the Centre Alliance.

Ben Oquist, the executive director of the Australia Institute thinktank and one of Canberra's acknowledged gurus of Senate procedure and tactics, says the Centre Alliance would make the government work hard for its legislative successes.

"Even though Xenophon is not there anymore, they've got a lot of experience under their belt. They're wily negotiators, and they know how to read the mood," he said.

- SMH/The Age