He was selected to serve as a senator for Western Australia, representing the Liberal Party, to fill a casual vacancy following Mathias Cormann's resignation.
He worked in marine transport and logistics for several energy and resource companies, with his holdings in those criticised as a potential conflict of interest.
[1] In 2016, Small challenged the incumbent member for Forrest, Nola Marino, for preselection to be the Liberal Party candidate for the seat at that year's federal election.
[2] Mathias Cormann (then serving as finance minister) announced his retirement from politics in July 2020 to run for the office of Secretary-General of the OECD.
[9] Small was selected by the Liberal Party's Western Australian branch at a meeting the following day,[10][11] beating former state minister Albert Jacob[12] who was seen as too sympathetic to religious conservatives.
[16] Small served on seven different Senate committees during his term: Job Security, Education and Employment (both Legislative and References), Human Rights, Public Works, Migration, and Road Safety.
[18] In a statement released on 15 April 2022, Small revealed that while preparing documents for the upcoming federal election he discovered that he held Australian-New Zealand dual citizenship, and had resigned as a member of the Senate that day.
[3] The renunciation came just a week before nominations closed for the federal election, in which he ran in third position on the Liberal Party's Western Australian Senate ticket.
[25] Marino announced that she would retire at the 2025 Australian federal election, and Small was (initially) the only nominee to be the Liberal's candidate for Forrest, which remains a very safe seat.
[30] However, he has since been aligned with the conservative National Right faction of the federal Liberal Party (led by Peter Dutton), similar to his predecessor Cormann.