Tory Shepherd: A completely crazy day in a splintering Senate

JUST when you thought Parliament couldn’t get any weirder, along comes a fracturing Senate. And its Senators.

Senator Glenn Lazarus in the Senate Chamber at Parliament House in Canberra.

• Senate chaos casts doubt on July poll

JUST when you thought Parliament couldn’t get any weirder, Minister for Mirth Christopher Pyne started channelling Jack Black from the musical comedy School of Rock.

But it was in the Senate that things got really surreal.

In short, the Government teamed up with the Greens to try to get senate voting reforms through.

The crossbenchers — who are likely to be turfed if those reforms pass — did everything they could to stop them. The Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party’s Ricky Muir wanted to debate different legislation on the construction industry watchdog, the ABCC.

That’s the legislation that could also trigger a double dissolution. The Governments wants to keep it as a trigger but not to actually pull the thing before they’ve sorted out those senate reforms.

Then Liberal Democrat David Leyonhjlem thought it would be fun to try for debate on same-sex marriage. That pushed the Greens to vote with the Government to gag debate on an issue very close to their hearts.

It had the side-effect of enraging Labor.

Queensland Senator Glenn Lazarus decided to have a crack at getting anti-fracking legislation up.

This is politics at its arcane best, where pragmatism and self-preservation triumph over ideology.

At one stage, there was no one in the House who appeared to know the rules around bringing the Senate back early to get through all the legislation.

It was chaotic. And there are a lot of people in the House who have a vested interest in ensuring the perception of chaos continues.

Some of those people are within the Government.

Out of all that argy bargy, what we now know is: that election timing is getting superbly complicated for the Government; that they’re still planning for a May 10 Budget; that politicians are politicians.

And that should the Government lose the next election, Mr Pyne could have a sterling second career in show business.