The contest to win control of the House of Representatives is the main game in a federal election … but no bills become law without majority support in the Senate.

There are 76 senators and so a majority is 39. The Coalition has 30 and Labor 25 leaving both well short of a majority. The remaining 21 senators (neither part of government nor opposition) are the crossbench.

From 1901 to 1949, a ‘first-past-the-post’ method of electing senators often resulted in lopsided senate majorities for whoever held power in the House of Representatives. It also prevented minor parties from being elected to the Senate.

The Senate electoral rules changed in 1949 with the adoption of ‘proportional representation.’ The logic of ‘proportional representation’ is if 14.29% of voters in a state vote 1 for the XYZ Party then the XYZ Party is guaranteed one senator (they often win with less thanks to preferences).

The 1949 reform opened the door to crossbench senators. The first crossbench senators of any significance appeared in the 1950s. The Democratic Labor Party (DLP) typically held around six (out of 60) senators for two decades.

The DLP stopped winning senate elections during the polarising Whitlam era. In the double dissolution of 1974, only two crossbenchers were elected. One of them was the first to represent the Liberal Movement which would soon rebadge as the Australian Democrats. Their peak was after the 1998 election when they had nine senators (from 76) and a balance of power though they haven’t won a senate spot since.

Australian Democrat voters have shifted to the Greens who had one senator in 1998 but today have 12 of our 21 crossbenchers (Lidia Thorpe was elected as a Green and votes with the Greens so I have included her in the 12).

A generation ago, Labor strategists recognised a powerful crossbench is all but inevitable … and so (often through gritted teeth) helped cultivate the Greens. Labor doesn’t need to do deals with a hodgepodge of minor left parties. Labor has a business-like relationship with the minor party to their left who owns the minor left. This mutually beneficial arrangement has maximised the tally of left-of-centre senators.

The Coalition has the opposite relationship with minor parties to their right – they consider the crossbench and the minor right an irritation. As a result, the minor-right is a motley crew. We’re splintered. Of today’s 21 crossbenchers, there are only four reliable right-wing votes – (Ralph Babet, Pauline Hanson, Gerard Rennick and Malcolm Roberts).

In the 2022 federal election, the minor parties to the right of the Coalition won a combined 11.12% … easily enough in win one senator in each of the six states (delivering a tally of 12 after another election). We had the votes in 2022 for six senators but thanks to a splintered vote we won just two (Babet and Hanson). We had the votes but lacked a smart strategy.

Minor parties on the right have some sharp differences but we agree on 80%. We’re all somewhat sceptical of the global warming official narrative. We want a DOGE-style purge. We reject woke BS. We’re proud of Australia. We don’t agree with the government throwing its weight around in the culture wars and generally agree our migration program needs a breather. Most importantly we’re all pro-free enterprise and pro-free speech.

How do we convert potential into power? Here are four options to maximise the power of the minor right in the Senate:

MERGER. The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has a lot of rules and it is way too late to merge various parties in time for this election. It is also not a good idea. If we sticky-taped all our policy platforms together we’d be like today’s Liberal Party and stand for nothing. Maintaining our distinct policy agendas as stand-alone entities allows us to win votes in our own way. All the minor right parties are hopeful of themselves emerging one day as the dominant party on the minor right. I wish them all well but until dominance has been achieved by one we need to cooperate at critical moments. I want six Libertarian senators elected at the coming election … but I will still be thrilled if we get any combination of six new senators representing the various minor right parties.

PREFERENCE DEALS. All the minor parties on the right would nominate their own senate ticket and our ‘How to Vote’ cards recommend our voter’s preference for the other minor parties on the right … and then put Liberal ahead of Labor and the Greens/Teals. Sounds great … but that message was drummed into our voters in 2022. Despite those efforts, we lost around one in three of the minor right votes to the major parties via preferences. Many hundreds of thousands of voters gave their first preference to their favourite minor right party and then gave their second to the Coalition … which is effectively the same as voting 1 for the Coalition. This is a proven losing strategy.

SUMMIT. Key figures from the minor right parties confer about who they are running for the Senate in the six states … and then they come to a consensus as to which candidate in each state has the best chance of winning. All the other parties would stand down and endorse and campaign in favour of the agreed leading senate candidate in each state. Good in theory but hard to see the parties all agreeing on who the most electable candidate is.

GRAND PRIMARY. The six states each convene a Grand Primary which would be held somewhere like a capital city town hall. The purpose of the Grand Primary is to elect the minor right’s best senate candidate in each state. All rank-and-file members of all minor-right parties will be invited to attend and hear an address from the senate candidate from each of the participating parties followed by a debate and Q&A.

The finale will be for all members to vote and the winner is declared the minor right’s lead senate candidate in their particular state. Ideally, the other five candidates required on a senate ticket would represent a spectrum of the minor-right parties (AEC rules permit up to three parties being named on a joint ticket). This strategy has the best chance to deliver a powerful minor-right presence on the Senate’s crossbench.

Let’s imagine a month from now 1,000 minor right party members spend at day at the Hobart Town Hall and hear speeches etc from six candidates who represent six minor parties on the right. Let’s then imagine the One Nation candidate has come first, the Trumpet of Patriots candidates comes second, the Libertarian Party candidate has come third, the Family First candidate has come fourth, the Heart candidate has come fifth and the Shooters, Farmers and Fishers candidate has come sixth. On the day of the federal election, there will be an option on the senate ballot paper that is a joint ticket and above the line it will say, ‘One Nation/Trumpet of Patriots/ Libertarian Party.’

The Grand Primary would be good theatre and live-streamed so we can reach and persuade more voters from among the general public. An open democratic process will also motivate volunteers and donors. The membership of the various parties overwhelmingly get along and while some may be disappointed if their preferred candidate doesn’t win, they will respect a democratic open process. Each lead senate candidate would have legitimacy and momentum coming out of the Grand Primary.

If you are a member or supporter of a minor right party and agree with the Grand Primary strategy please share this with your party executives.

Under the Grand Primary solution, we’d encourage all minor right parties to contest lower house seats. All this campaigning from various parties will feed senate votes into the joint senate ticket. We’d then split the electoral funding generated from the senate vote according to how many votes each of the minor right parties received in the lower house.