One Nation set for Senate boost

Peter Georgiou has been touted as a replacement for brother-in-law Rod Culleton after a High Court ruling.

The Senate will have just 74 members when it sits next Tuesday after the High Court today finally ended the saga around rebel Rod Culleton by ruling that he was ineligible to have ever been a One Nation candidate at last year’s election.

It has ordered a special count of Western Australian ballot papers to determine a replacement, and Pauline Hanson expects the second candidate on the One Nation WA ticket, Mr Culleton’s brother-in-law Peter Georgiou, will get the seat. That is the most likely outcome.

But the exact mechanism for that recount is yet to be approved by the High Court. The Australian has been told officials from the Australian Electoral Commission and the Commonwealth are expected to appear before a single Justice of the court with a plan for the recount.

There will not be a fresh election and it will not be a casual vacancy, which is what usually happens when a Senate seat falls vacant, meaning the WA Parliament will have no role in selecting or approving the replacement senator.

The High Court said the 52,548 votes cast “above the line” on the WA ballot paper for One Nation that originally flowed to Mr Culleton should be counted in favour of Mr Georgiou. “The evidence established that 96.04 per cent of the votes received by Senator Culleton were votes for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party. A special count would not distort the true legal intent of the voters,” said the majority judgment.

The unknown factor is whether striking out Mr Culleton’s name and presumably the 2164 direct votes he received “below the line” will change the result. Mr Georgiou received only 158 direct votes.

Mr Culleton was the 11th out of 12 senators elected for WA. The Greens Rachel Siewert scored the final seat.

No time frame has been set for resolving the issue, although the High Court is said to be keen for a speedy resolution.

The Senate suits for the next fortnight and has a week of estimates hearings at the end of the month.

It remains unclear when the Senate will be restored to its full complement of 76 senators. The High Court is also still to rule on the eligibility of former Family First senator Bob Day in South Australia, and how will his replacement be selected.