Senate Cross-Bench

Cross bench

In our Senate, we have a number of Senators from the two big parties, but we also have some Senators from smaller parties, who are "unaligned" with those bigger parties. These Senators are often called the "cross-bench", because they sit in the middle of the two main parties. Because neither of the big parties have a majority in the Senate, it is crucially important that they are able to attract votes from the cross-bench in favour of their proposed laws.

The details of the small cross-bench are listed below because this small group has a huge amount of power to work together to block or encourage proposed legislation, proposed rules and parliamentary committee inquiries. If you write to no-one else, i strongly encourage you to write to the cross-bench because influencing their views could have an enormous effect on what our Parliament agrees to - or does not.