What a surprise - another political staffer to join the Senate

The Senate ranks of what we can call career politicians is now nearly two thirds. 
The choice tonight of Slade Brockman, Finance Minister Mathias Cormann's former chief of staff, to represent Western Australia takes the ranks of former political staffers in the Senate to 30. Toss is another 10 Senators who worked as trade union officials and that's 40 out of the total of 74.
To those ranks of the career politicians probably we should add the eight Senators who were state or territory MPs before sitting on the red Senate benches. That takes the careerists to a 65 per cent share.

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