The major political parties are ganging up on the little players to try to shut them out of the Senate.
In changes that could mean an end to tablecloth-sized ballot papers, the Liberal, Nationals and Labor parties are calling for radical reform of the way senators are elected.
Top of their lists is the introduction of optional preferential voting, which would dispense with the need to rank all candidates.
They also want minimum membership numbers before a party can register for an election, and a cap on minimum voter support before a candidate can be elected.
Liberal Party federal director Brian Loughnane says loopholes in the voting system are being exploited by the micro-parties.
Using a web of complex preference arrangements diverse micro-parties have swapped votes in the hope that one of them wins a seat.
At September's federal election candidates from the Australian Motoring Enthusiast Party and Family First were elected to the Senate with just a fraction of the primary vote.
"Political parties are an important part of the tapestry of the democracy, and the more the merrier," Mr Loughnane told a parliamentary inquiry hearing in Canberra on Monday.
But they needed to have level of support that distinguished them from interest groups, he said.
Candidates should meet a primary vote cap before being elected, which would amount to about 1.4 per cent of the vote.
Parties should be required to demonstrate they had at least 2000 members nationally, or have at least one member already sitting in parliament.
Labor's national secretary George Wright said party rules should not be so tough as to discourage "conviction micro-parties".
"They should though be sufficiently rigorous to discourage opportunist micro-parties motivated by the potential to preference harvest," he told the hearing.
The Nationals federal director Scott Mitchell said the Senate voting system wasn't working nor was it transparent.
"Below-the-line voting has become ultimately intimidating so that no-one does it," he said.
The Australian Greens are also calling for optional preferential voting, saying the system is being gamed.
