By ABC's Annabel Crabb Thursday 20 November 2014

Photo: Getting Jacqui Lambie and Ricky Muir on side just got trickier. (AAP)

There is much to dislike about organised party politics, but with six members of the Senate crossbench now voting whichever way they please, we will soon discover that structure and discipline has its perks, writes Annabel Crabb.

Last month, when I trekked over to Perth to visit Mathias Cormann with some Muscat jelly and a chocolate cigar that he politely but with Teutonic firmness refused to put anywhere near his lips while the cameras were on, I asked him what it was like to deal with newbie senators like Jacqui Lambie and Ricky Muir.

He was upbeat.

"At the end of the day, people like Ricky Muir, Jacqui Lambie and so on, they represent people across Australia that we need to persuade," he said.

"In a way, it actually makes us better as a Government having to convince people like Ricky Muir and Jacqui Lambie in the Senate of what we're doing because ultimately, if we can convince them, chances are that we are able to convince the larger number of people across the community as a whole."

One assumes that the champagne is on ice in the Finance Minister's office. As of yesterday, the Government now has a splendid opportunity to become even better.

Senator Lambie has finally hacked herself free of the Palmer United Party and now proposes to negotiate on her own. Ricky Muir's decision last night to join her in reversing the changes they jointly helped make just months ago to the regulation of the trillion-dollar Australian financial services industry is an indicator that the former four-strong voting bloc associated with Clive Palmer's party has now shrunk to two - Palmer loyalists Glenn Lazarus and Dio Wang.

What does that mean? Lots, actually.

To get any piece of legislation through the Senate, if it's opposed by Labor and the Greens, the Government needs six extra votes besides its own.

Getting those six votes from the field of eight crossbenchers that the Australian people - with our excellent and slightly vindictive sense of humour - sent to the Senate over the last two elections is a tricky job.

I call it "Bunnies In A Basket". Getting six of the wriggly little buggers to get in and stay in is very tricky. If four of them happen to be lashed together, it makes things much easier. You can negotiate once, and offer one set of inducements/threats/imprecations, and - bam! Four votes in the basket!

When they're all operating separately, it's exponentially more difficult. Not only do you have to spend time negotiating with senators individually, but you run the very significant risk that the concessions you make to one will prove repellent to another, so that getting - for example - Bunny Number Four into the basket might actually cause Bunny Number One to pop out again.

Exhausting? You bet.

Two interesting things arise from the new liberation of Lambie and Muir.

One is that Senator Cormann's observation becomes truer than ever. And the financial services regulations Lambie and Muir tipped out last night provide a perfect example.

Both senators voted - in accordance with the decision made by the Palmer United Party - to get rid of Labor's protections for investors earlier this year.

Both changed their minds over subsequent months amid strong lobbying from Labor, the Greens and consumer groups (seasoned with a generous pinch of "Screw you, Clive") and last night reimposed the measures they had hitherto voted to abolish.

The Government, in other words, failed to convince these two permanently of the merits of the case. And now, with a crossbench in the Senate including six individuals who will vote whichever way they please, we have something approaching a People's Jury. Six people who - on the face of it - are not told what to do by a party, but are making up their minds on each bit of legislation according to who is better at convincing them.

The other interesting thing is that this new landscape opens opportunities for both Labor and the Greens.

Yesterday's commando raid to reinstate the financial services reforms was orchestrated by Labor Senator Sam Dastyari, in partnership with the Greens. It's a reminder that when playing Bunnies In A Basket, it's not enough just to concentrate on getting your bunnies in. You also have to look out for poachers.

All in all, it adds up to an even tougher task for the resolutely optimistic Senator Cormann and his colleagues.

As for the Palmer United Party - well, the events of the past few weeks are not especially surprising.

There is much to dislike about organised party politics; when parties get old and sclerotic, or are overtaken by bickering and insularity, rich ground is created for a protest movement like that headed by Clive Palmer.

But the ironic thing is that when these parties experience great electoral success (a giddy rush of support at the ballot box, huge fame and profile for whichever personality-cult-hero appears at its helm) they often gnaw themselves to bits precisely because they do not have the history and inflexible structures of the major parties they so deplore.

Disputes erupt over party direction. Defections are rife. Much-spirited waving-about of party constitutions (exultantly drafted in happier times) ensues, sometimes followed by intensely complex litigation. Members communicate by means of injured-sounding press releases, amid much disagreement about what the grassroots members of party X really want.

This year alone, these exact circumstances have befallen not only the Palmer United Party, but also the Democratic Labor Party (whose sole Senator, John Madigan, quit in disgust and is now being, surprise surprise, sued) and Senator Muir himself, whose struggles with his own Motorists already have been quite epic.

What's the lesson? Party structures and discipline are annoying, but they do help to keep people from thinking it's all about them.

They also provide some predictability to negotiations. There will be many who take delight in the People's Jury, and indeed there is something refreshing about the idea of a Senate which responds to advocacy rather than brutal mathematics.

But if you were a financial adviser, I'd bet you wouldn't be feeling so sanguine this morning. And if they can come for the financial advisers, they can come for anyone.

Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political writer. View her full profile here.

Keeping 'Bunnies In A Basket' in the Senate - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)