Stuart Beedie

The record size of the crossbench in today’s Australian Senate is no accident. It is not a phenomena limited to Australia - democracies in Europe, South America and Asia are increasingly home to a raft of smaller parties exercising political clout. Though ruling governments — Labor or Liberal, Left or Right — rail against the shift, voters are increasingly weary of the ‘two party’ binary, and the ‘politics as usual’ it represents.