Leader of the Government in the Senate (Australia)
The current Leader of the Government in the Senate is Mathias Cormann. The current Deputy Leader of the Government in the Senate is Simon Birmingham, who was appointed on the same date following the resignation of Mitch Fifield.
2017–18 Australian parliamentary eligibility crisis
The seats of the disqualified Senators were filled by countbacks of the 2016 Senate election results in their states of Western Australia, Queensland and New South Wales. The countback results were announced on 10 November: in Western Australia, the Greens' Scott Ludlam was to be replaced by the Greens' Jordon Steele-John; in Queensland, the Greens' Larissa Waters was to be replaced by former Australian Democrats leader and current Greens member Andrew Bartlett, One Nation's Malcolm Roberts was to be replaced by One Nation's Fraser Anning, and the Nationals' Fiona Nash was to be replaced by Liberal Hollie Hughes. However, the court delayed the appointment of Nationals' Fiona Nash's replacement Liberal Hollie Hughes due to concerns that Hughes may be ineligible under s 44(iv) of the Constitution as a holder of an office of profit under the Crown; Hughes was reappointed to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal – a role that would ordinarily disqualify her under that section – in the period following her apparent election defeat but resigned from the position prior to the recount. The question was whether her tenure of that office had overlapped with the process of the election.