Badruddin was not a very well known politician in the early 1990s, and was a backbencher in Parliament as Member of Parliament (MP) for the constituency of Yan in Kedah until his defeat in the 1999 general election to Nasharudin bin Mat Isa from PAS, losing by 182 votes.
In Australian politics, a Dorothy Dixer is a rehearsed or planted question asked of a government Minister by a backbencher of his/her own political party during Parliamentary Question Time.
The Progressive Conservatives under Mike Harris won the election, and Hardeman was a government backbencher for the next four years.
Her local MP, Conservative backbencher Sir Michael Spicer, recalled in Parliament in 2003 how he had first met her when he was addressing the sixth form at The Chase School, where Smith's mother was a teacher.
Initially a government backbencher, he withdrew his support from Sir Michael Somare's coalition government in June 2010, in protest over amendments to the Environment Act, which he said had been undemocratically "bulldozed through Parliament".
He was not appointed to the cabinet of Mike Harris, and served as a government backbencher for the next four years.
Michael Laws had become a rebel backbencher in the National Party caucus since his former boss, Winston Peters, had left the party in 1992.
On August 19, 2007, it was widely reported that the former Prime Minister of Australia, Kevin Rudd, had visited Scores in September 2003 with New York Post editor Col Allan and Labor backbencher Warren Snowdon.
He left the Cabinet after the 1992 general election, and returned to the backbenches where he served as Chairman of the Intelligence and Security Select Committee from 1994–2001, during which time KGB agent Vasili Mitrokhin defected to reveal 87-year-old Melita Norwood as a Soviet spy.
In April 2005 the UNC was further weakened when Pointe-à-Pierre MP Gillian Lucky and San Juan MP Fuad Khan declared themselves to be "independent UNC members" and relocated to the Opposition backbenches.