A mantra of the last few days' coverage has been that many pieces of legislation will have to wait until the Senate changes - but just how big a problem is really there? Of course, in the event that Gary Humphries' current 1.022 provisional quota [1]turns out to be 0.97 (1), then the problem maybe isn't there at all (and Kevin et al should be bowing to Margo every time she walks past), but let's look at the more likely outcome.

For the purposes of this discussion, let's assume that the Democrats, Greens and Family First can be persuaded onside, either because they're in favour of change anyway, or because the Government has a demonstrable mandate for change. So we are looking at a possible 39:37 vote against Kyoto, WorkChoices or whatever.

So, the question resolves down to this: can Labor peel off one or two Liberal or National Senators to vote with them on each significant issue? That nice Mr Joyce is an obvious candidate, at least on WorkChoices, and on each issue there are others who can be identified as having sympathetic views.

The commentariat seem to me to have missed one really important factor here: the Coalition no longer has their hands on the patronage and pork machines to buy or reward their support - Labor has. Particularly for a retiring Senator (2), how would he/she feel about going out with a smallish black mark for having voted for something that was going to be passed anyway in a few months time versus getting some favourite project up or going off in July to some nicer place than might otherwise have been the case ...

Anyone with more detailed knowledge than me prepared to finger the likely peelers on specific issues?

Notes:

(1) has to fall that far, assuming that the LDP 0.007 and Shooters/Fishers' 0.0175 go to GH, and therefore possibly get him to quota before the rest get redistributed to Kerry Tucker.

(2) the Nat/Lib retirers are Sandy Macdonald, Rod Kemp, Kay Patterson, Ross Lightfoot, John Watson.