Victoria’s only Greens senator elected on Saturday, Footscray’s Janet Rice, says eight crossbenchers tipped to win upper-house seats could favour the Coalition government.
The former Maribyrnong mayor, who enters the house in
July, said on Monday that she was not yet convinced that Ricky Muir of
the Australian Motorist Enthusiast Party would take one of the state’s
six senate seats.
Labor and Liberal each won two of the six available
seats in Victoria. Nationwide, counting new and continuing senators, the
Greens have 10 seats, Labor 25 and the Coalition 33.
Eight seats are tipped to go to diverse candidates.
“On the current counting, there are independent senators from a
whole range of parties, most of whom are fairly conservative parties, so
the Liberals may have more opportunity to get various bits of
legislation through, through negotiations with them,” Ms Rice said.
She said she hoped the current Labor senators would stand firm in
the face of prime minister-elect Tony Abbott’s move to repeal the carbon
tax before July 1.
“At the moment they’ve got 33 senators in the new senate and so
they’ll need to get the support of six other senators to get legislation
through. They’re going to negotiate presumably with these eight
conservatives and independents, all of whom are going to have their own
little things that they support. It’s going to be very interesting.”
