He was also the secretary of the ALP's Industry Policy Committee in Tasmania.
He attributed his October 2001 resignation from the ALP to their policies on logging.
In the 2001–04 Parliament, Murphy shared the balance of power with Senators Len Harris, Brian Harradine and Meg Lees, who left the Australian Democrats in 2002.
[2][3] Murphy often voted with the government to pass key pieces of legislation.
[4] Murphy did, however, vote down several pieces of government legislation; most notably when, in March 2004, Murphy joined with Harradine to block the full privatisation of two-thirds state-owned telecommunications company Telstra.