Riginslinger, you've got the gist of it as far as Pauline Hanson's legacy is concerned.

Regarding the Greens in our election, the main results I know at the moment are;
1 The Greens candidate for the Senate seat in the ACT didn't get up; Senate seats (two each in the ACT and the Northern Territory but only one each in a half senate election like the one just counting) from the Territories have slightly different rules to Senate seats from the States (6 elected from each State in a half Senate election and 12 from each State after a Double Dissolution. Territory Senators take their seats as soon as the polls are declared but State Senator, having a fixed term, must wait until next July. This would have changed the balance of power in the Senate immediately.

2   The Greens Senator from NSW may have lost her seat. Even if this is ultimately correct she will be there until July.

Your comment about the effects of having only two major parties is much the same for Oz, USA, UK and France except for the effects of counting and distributing preferences. We had "first past the post" counting in Oz until the late 50s or early 60s, with the same effects as currently in the US.

The effect of Perot and possibly Ralph Nader, as third candidates in the recent US Presidential elections is usually regarded as "detrimentally" diverting votes from the only candidate (of your choice) worth electing. The French and most Europeans get around this in their Presidential elections by having two polling days; the first weeds out all except the two highest-polling candidates and the second presents a choice between only those two candidates. Theoretically, minor parties can get a candidate up into the runoff with such a system but the two polling days are a fortnight apart.

The Oz politicians of the late 50s and early 60s were responding to a claim that some electorates had three (usually; more than two, in any case) candidates that were equally desirable/undesirable in the eyes of voters and the voters wanted a way of making sure their choices "counted" beyond a situation where one got 34% of the votes and the other two each got 33%. Hence the preferential system was introduced. In a three-way race, if a candidate gets "1" from more than 50% of the votes cast in their electorate they are declared elected but, if each candidate gets fewer than 50%, the one with the fewest "1" ("primary votes" in Oz terminology) has their papers distributed to the other candidates according to which candidate had their name ranked "2". If a candidate now has more than 50% of the total votes cast they are declared elected but, if not, once again the candidate with the fewest papers in their pile has their papers distributed among the others according to the "3" rankings. And so on until one candidates scores more than 50% of the votes cast.

Hence the use of the term "Two party preferred" when commentators describe predictions and/or results. And the argybargy about which party id directing their preferences to which other party. Serious bunfights but all the counting is rather quick these days.

I was able to describe all this to my offspring as we watched (the above is more or less the same as I told them on Saturday night) but the explanation of how the Senate seats are counted takes a bit longer.

Cheers, Rowan