All signs point to a hung parliament: what does this mean, and what should crossbenchers do?

For the first time in living memory Australia is going into an election campaign facing not just an outside chance, but a strong probability, of a hung parliament.A mid-February YouGov poll with an impressive sample size put the likelihood that neither party would reach the magic figure of 76 seats in the 150-seat House of Representatives at 78%. A month later the same poll found Labor had improved its position in terms of the number of seats it was projected to win (though with a primary vote even lower than in 2022), but still put the chances of neither party having an overall majority at 61.3%.Before the 2022 election the Coalition held up the spectre of “instability and chaos” if no party was returned with a majority. Labor won just enough seats to govern in its own right, but 16 crossbenchers were elected in the House of Representatives, the largest number since 1934. Since then two Liberal MPs (Russell Broadbent and Ian Goodenough) and one National (Andrew Gee) have left their pa...