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.
Australian Senate
Bob Day, of the Family First Party, resigned from the Senate on 1 November 2016 following the collapse of his business. His eligibility to have stood in the 2016 election was referred by the Senate to the High Court, sitting as the Court of Disputed Returns. In April 2017 the court found that Day was not validly elected at the 2016 election and ordered that a special recount of South Australian ballot papers be held in order to determine his replacement. The court announced that Lucy Gichuhi was elected in his place on 19 April 2017. On 26 April 2017, Family First merged with the Australian Conservatives; however, Gichuhi declined to join the new party, announcing she would sit as an independent.