The major parties did poorly, barely getting more than 50% of the vote together. The Liberal Party suffered a -5.5% swing (which is hardly unusual for a government in a byelection), and their coalition partner the Nationals only got around 3% of the vote (about 1/4 of the Palmer United Party's vote), not coming close to a Senate seat. Meanwhile, Labor also fared poorly, suffering a -4.8% swing. Some of this could be remaining uppity-sheila-hate, but it's more likely to be due to the ALP having kicked an own-goal, deciding that given that the Mining State is uniformly right-wing in tendencies and heading up their ballot paper with an ultraconservative loose cannon and former student-union comrade of Tony Abbott, who, in an address to a Christian group, said that Labor's too full of "weird lefties" and Abbott could make a great Prime Minister. Ironically, as he was at the top of the ballot paper, his seat is assured, whereas whether the ALP's second candidate, Louise Pratt, will get up is a very open question. Back to the focus group, boys...
Meanwhile, among the winners of the night are the Greens; Scott Ludlam, the savvy digital-rights advocate whose seat hung on a handful of votes in the last election, is definitely in with a solid margin. This is undoubtedly partly a result of the Greens' solid campaign and partly the ALP having decided that they don't need progressives and that they should concentrate on becoming a more watered-down Liberal Party. The progressives, it seems, have taken the hint and gotten behind the Greens, and there seems to have been more of them than the ALP's wonks expected.
Another winner, or at least a high-roller in the casino that is politics, is Clive Palmer's Palmer United Party, who bagged a seat for less than A$20m. Palmer's candidates are hard to find, being not so much parliamentarians as conduits of their employer's will, bound by contract to vote as the boss says. Australia seems to be on its way to having proper oligarchs, in the Russian sense of the word.
There is still some question over who will get the last seat; whether the Liberals (who had three seats before the election) will win it again or whether it'll go to the ALP. The word on the street is that postal votes tend to lean right, so the Liberals might end up getting it.
If I were Tony Abbott, my priority right now would be to seduce Joe Bullock into crossing the floor and either joining the Liberals or sitting as a (conservative) Independent. Given that both Abbott and Bullock are men who, in an earlier time, could well have joined the DLP, that may be a viable proposition, or at least easier than negotiating with a panoply of minor parties.