Fresh faces, clean slates

Fresh faces, clean slates
Age (subscription) - Melbourne,Victoria,Australia

...But the real wild card in the new Senate line-up is the conservative-minded Family First senator-elect Steve Fielding.

With the Nationals' Barnaby Joyce already on the record as opposing the sale of Telstra and expressing strong reservations about other key legislation, such as the move to ban compulsory student unionism, Fielding could become a crucial number to get critical Government legislation over the line.

A family-values man with strong connections to Australia's burgeoning evangelical church movement, Fielding has already been carefully courted by Prime Minister John Howard and Communications Minister Helen Coonan.

But while Fielding's natural conservatism would appear to put him closer to the Coalition than to Labor, which way this entirely unpredictable man will vote on key legislation is impossible to predict.

The one sure thing is that Australians are likely to get to know Fielding a lot better than they know him now.