If the government has a Senate headache now, it will be reaching for the migraine tablets at the prospect of a One Nation disintegration.
One Nation's history, its character and its record in the term of this Parliament rate it a real possibility that Pauline Hanson could lose control of her Senate posse during this parliamentary year.
Pauline Hanson faces a challenge in keeping her party united. Credit: Andrew Meares
As Malcolm Turnbull likes to quote John Howard, "politics is the iron law of arithmetic". The credibility of his government rests on getting the numbers in the Senate to pass his legislation, and the Senate's arithmetic is already tricky enough. On top of the Coalition's 30 votes, the government needs another nine to get anything done. If Labor and the Greens don't oppose, no problem. But without the support of either or both the other major parties, the government must look to the crossbenches.
The Senate that the Prime Minister insists is working already looks more like a Mad Hatter's Tea Party than an austere house of review. One Nation senators are already free to vote against their party. One of them, Malcolm Roberts, has declared his allegiance to Queenslanders ahead of his party. How much more intractable will it be if the number of crossbench voting parties increases from the current five (One Nation, Nick Xenophon Team, Derryn Hinch's Justice Party, Jacqui Lambie Network and David Lleyonhjelm's Liberal Democrats) to six or seven or more, if Family First regains its place and One Nation make a habit of going it alone?
If the High Court decides after a hearing in February that the election of the since-resigned Bob Day of Family First was invalid because the lease arrangements for his electoral office breached the constitution, his place could go to Labor. That gives the government one less crossbencher to have to horsetrade with. But if the High Court decides Day's election was valid, Family First keeps the seat.
For the rogue former One Nation senator Rod Culleton to stay in the Parliament two things need to happen. His Supreme Court challenge to the Federal Court's declaration that he is bankrupt needs to succeed, and the High Court challenge to his eligibility to be elected to Parliament while facing a larceny charge needs to fail.
Whatever happens, no-one can bank his vote. Before breaking with One Nation last month he several times voted in opposition to his party, most notably scuppering One Nation's deal with the government to support a 15 per cent rate of tax on backpacker incomes. If he is thrown out because of the bankruptcy ruling, his Senate seat reverts to his former party, a potential plus for Hanson. But if it's the High Court that finishes him, an automatic recount would most likely give it to his brother-in-law Peter Georgiou who was second on One Nation's Senate ticket. That is not a prospect Pauline Hanson relishes.
One Nation plans to contest 36 seats in the next Queensland state election which Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is expected to call in the first half of this year. It also plans to challenge the Nationals at the Western Australian election in March by appealing to unemployed mining workers, alienated farmers and young voters.
Donald Trump's stunning victory has emboldened those who subscribe to his style of anti-politics. In Australia Pauline Hanson is their elder statesman. But she will need all the leadership skills she possesses, maybe more, to command loyalty from her party of outsiders and conspiracy theory-prone renegades and mould them into a cohesive force. Success has beaten her before: no sooner had One Nation won 11 seats in the 1998 Queensland election than three of its elected MPs baulked at head office control to split the party; by 2001 it was down to three seats.
With Tony Abbott yapping at his heels, the Prime Minister is under pressure to ride the populist wave. In crashing the two industrial relations double dissolution bills, the revised super reforms and the backpacker tax through, he has shown himself willing to cut almost any deal to pass his legislative program. That gives crossbenchers a golden opportunity to exercise exactly the sort of political self-interest in promoting their pet projects that has led to disillusion with the major parties. The dysfunctional shambles brought about by hankering for a new style of politics promises to test the stamina and resolve of major and minor parties alike in 2017.