To force a vote of no confidence by suspending standing orders requires 76 votes. How do the numbers stack up?

With Barnaby Joyce’s eligibility to sit in the House of Representatives referred to Australia’s high court, Labor has said that the Turnbull government’s majority “is in question”.

The loss of its majority would destabilise the government and could topple it entirely. That would require a successful motion of no confidence.

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To force a vote of no confidence by suspending standing orders requires an absolute majority of 76 votes. It’s a high threshold and the numbers aren’t there now to bring it on: the Coalition has 76 seats and Labor just 69.

Another path to a vote of no confidence is for the government to grant leave for the motion and bring it on, in which case it is dealt with as a priority and only a simple majority is needed to win it.

The reason the high court case is so significant is if Joyce were ruled ineligible, the number of Coalition MPs in the lower house could fall from 76 to 75. That is no longer an absolute majority of 150 members; it would be technically a minority government.

If Joyce were ruled ineligible and Labor or a friendly independent won the resulting byelection (the former independent Tony Windsor has not ruled out running) the risk for the government increases.

Labor has 69 MPs. If it won votes from the Greens MP Adam Bandt, Joyce’s replacement, the Nick Xenophon Team’s Rebekha Sharkie, and the independents Bob Katter, Cathy McGowan and Andrew Wilkie it could reach 75 votes.

With Joyce ruled ineligible and the Liberal MP Tony Smith sitting in the speaker’s chair Labor could theoretically win a no confidence vote 75 to 74.

But this scenario assumes the crossbench lines up unanimously with Labor.

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On Tuesday Katter withdrew his agreement to give confidence and supply to the government. Wilkie and NXT never had such an agreement with the government, and Xenophon said it was a “hypothetical” what his party would do if Joyce were deemed ineligible, providing no guarantee to the government.

McGowan has confirmed that she stands by her agreement to guarantee confidence and supply and, assuming that remains true, the government will not fall (even if it lacks a majority in its own right).

There are many ifs before anything like this could befall the Turnbull government, but it’s scenarios like this that sit below the manager of opposition business, Tony Burke, saying that the Coalition’s majority is in question (and Coalition claims that Labor is seeking to “undermine confidence in the government”).