Colourful characters set for Senate Car lovers, sports enthusiasts and former sporting greats are likely to help shape the most colourful and fragmented senate in Australian political history. Olympic hockey gold medallist Nova Peris for the ALP and the Palmer United Party's Australian rugby league great Glenn Lazarus are likely to be sitting with independents like One Nation founder and one-time Dancing with the Stars contestant Pauline Hanson. The new Senate will also include parties as disparate and individualistic as the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party and the Australian Sports Party. This is because a grouping of 30 parties organised a tight swap of preferences in Saturday's election. The man behind the rise of Australia's micro-parties believes the Senate will have 18 members from outside the major parties from July next year. Political consultant Glenn Druery, mastermind behind the Minor Parties Alliance, said the two-party state was now history in Australia. "This is one of the biggest goals the minor parties have ever kicked," he told AAP on Sunday. To say that minor parties can't and shouldn't get elected is the same as saying the Coles-Woolies duopoly is best. "These people are reasonable people," he said. I don't believe they will be holding the country to ransom in the way the Labor-Greens have. They all have their own issues they want to deal with and that will be between them and the coalition government. Yet given the policies of the micro-parties and their opposition to the carbon tax, it is unlikely the coalition will have to call a double-dissolution election to remove any blockage. Mr Druery said that while it was not involved in the alliance, the Liberal Democrats would pick up a seat in NSW. The Liberal Democrats benefited from two factors - having the first box on the Senate ballot paper in NSW and a name which confused thousands of voters who thought they were backing the Liberal party. Liberal federal director Brian Loughnane complained to the electoral commission earlier this year about the name but his complaint was dismissed. Mr Druery reckons: The 76-member Senate, from the changeover in 2014, would comprise: 33 coalition, 25 Labor, 10 Greens, one Democratic Labor Party, two Palmer United Party, one Liberal Democrats, one Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, one Family First, one Australian Sports Party and independent Nick Xenophon. Family First would benefit from being a member of the alliance in South Australia, where the coalition is keeping two senators, Labor one, the Greens' Sarah Hanson-Young is holding on and Senator Xenophon will be returned, he said. In Western Australia the surprise winner from the alliance would be the Australian Sports Party with potentially the smallest primary vote in Australian electoral history. Three other WA senate seats would go to the coalition and one to Labor with the sixth seat being a contest between Labor and the Greens. Another alliance member, the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party, was on track to win a seat in Victoria, where the coalition would win three Senate seats and Labor one.