On Wednesday night, Pauline Hanson made her second maiden speech in the House of Representatives. Her first was back in 1996, when she infamously warned that Australia was being swamped by Asians. Now, 20 years later, she's simply swapped the demonym "Asians" out for "Muslims." This was basically the same speech, duplicated emotional cues and dogwhistles, just refocused on a new enemy.

For the next six years, Hanson will enter the Senate chamber in Canberra as an elected representative, and she'll be flanked by her three One Nation senators. Each day, they'll take their four seats to debate important matters of state, everything from taxes to relations with China.

We can blame this situation on preferential voting or a resurgence of reactionary conservatism—but there's also an element of very clever campaigning on behalf of her staff. Those are three largely unknown Senators, who were able to sweep into the country's highest office. But who are these guys? What do we know about them? We decided to compile some background information and the results were both unsurprising and depressing.

Brian Burston is the man to blame for One Nation's return. The gormless, mild-mannered architectural designer was around back in 1998 for One Nation's first run at power where he served as party whip.

This time, he's updating the party, moving it away with from all that talk about an "Asian invasion," which characterised its rise—instead redirecting the rhetoric to capitalise on the anti-Islamic feeling that's seemingly become so popular in Australia, and throughout the West.

Burston has not been shy about expressing his feelings on Islam. He described Lakemba in Sydney as "a Centrelink sinkhole," demanded a Royal Commission into Islam, and described Australia as a "Christian country" despite, you know, history.

"Islam is an infringement on our culture; we're a Christian country, I know we have some Jews as well… but the Muslims, they kneel five times a day and it's not how we are in this country," he told the Sydney Morning Herald.

Burston's strategy has been nothing if not successful—it saw a largely unknown former Cessnock councillor end up with 8,216 first preference votes in New South Wales. Now he's promising the new One Nation will be nothing like the old One Nation.

"They ran dopes," Burson has said of the party's period of lacklustre performance. "They were unemployed, inexperienced, not all that intellectual … we're more cohesive than the previous bunch… We're a more intelligent bunch for a start."

Roberts wants to fight the UN, fight the Greens, fight NASA, fight the CSIRO, fight Islam, fight 18C, fight Brian Cox, fight an international banking conspiracy run by Jewish families, and potentially fight grammar itself.

The former coal miner and management consultant has spent the last eight years bogged down in strange wars. In this time he's established a reputation for writing irate letters to politicians, scientists, journalists, and people he doesn't like. In one, he demanded $280,000 from Julia Gillard, personally. In another, he wrote a 5,200-word tirade to University of Melbourne climate scientist Dr David Karoly.

He also spent at least four of those eight years, researching his manifesto to debunk climate change. The document has 20 separate appendicies, one of which is 135 pages long.

Roberts went unemployed to do his research, giving up in his estimation millions of dollars, and even traveled across the US, where he would attend the libertarian Heartland Institute's climate sceptics conference in New York in 2008. During that time, he was also serving as the project leader of the Galileo Movement, an organisation of mostly old white men standing up to the man by waging war on the science of climate change. These guys were so hardcore, they were even too much for Andrew Bolt:

"Malcolm, Your conspiracy theory seemed utterly stupid even before I knew which families you meant. Now checking the list of banking families you've given me, your theory becomes terribly, shamefully familiar," the NewsCorp columnist wrote. "Two of the three most prominent and current banking families you've mentioned are Jewish, and the third is sometimes falsely assumed to be. Yes, this smacks too much of the Jewish world conspiracy theorising I've always loathed… I am offended to be linked to you."

This whiff of "Jewish world conspiracy" permeating Roberts' worldview isn't a coincidence—it's because he draws inspiration directly from the radical and extreme right. In 2013, the senator published his manifesto titled CSIROh!, which as you'd imagine is a frantic attack on climate science. What's interesting though, is that Roberts borrowed a lot of his theories from the late Eustice Mullins—a known white supremacist, Holocaust denier, and author of the noxious anti-Semitic book Secrets of the Federal Reserve.

This anti-banking paragraph from Roberts might as well have been copied word for word from the anti-semitic Mullins:

"The cabal of international bankers wield massive financial power across industries internationally. They control all three American TV networks through direct ownership and/or through cross-directorships. They own the major and most influential American newspapers. They own many of America's major corporations and control others through cross-directorships."

To top it off, the largely unknown Roberts was elected with just 77 first preference votes, coasting to a Senate spot on the back of Pauline Hanson's personal popularity. Now Roberts is getting paid $199,090 bucks a year plus staff and entitlements to run his mouth in the federal Australian senate.

Two themes come out of Rodney Culleton's official One Nation biography. The first is that he is a passionate farmer, and the second is that he is a good businessman. The overall narrative is that of a man of the soil, reluctantly called to leadership for his willingness to take on the banks and Islam.

Elected with 2,164 first preference votes, the self-described "dark horse" of One Nation has been in a bit of legal and financial trouble of his own. Culleton's company, DEQMO Pty Ltd, has gone under owing $4.8 million. Strangely, Culleton himself has claimed to be one of the company's biggest creditors, submitting he's owed $450,000 in unpaid wages. Another company he runs along with his wife, also a One Nation candidate, claims it's owed $4.6 million from DEQMO.

It's not the first time this has happened, either. Culleton reportedly owes $205,000 in rent to Wesfarmer's Dick Lester after a deal to expand Culleton's farm fell into trouble with ANZ. In his time, Culleton has served as director of at least three companies that have gone into administration owing a combined $11 million mostly to other farmers. Culleton, for his part, denies any wrongdoing.

"I've never been insolvent, am not insolvent and never will be insolvent," Culleton said when he defended himself in a long feature in Farm Weekly.

But the threat of criminal prosecution lingers. In August, Culleton appeared before the Perth Magistrates Court over allegations he stole a $27,000 hire car in 2015 during a clash with receivers who were attempting to repossess a friend's farm. If convicted, the maximum offence is seven years in prison.

As if once wasn't enough, Culleton is also facing prosecution in NSW for larceny, after he stole the keys of a tow-truck driver who had come to repossess his car—an offence that carries a maximum penalty of five years jail. Culleton didn't bother to turn up to court in March and was convicted. He later had the conviction annulled and a new hearing set for October.

If he is ultimately convicted of either offence, the senator may be ineligible to serve again in federal parliament because Section 44 of the Constitution stops anyone serving a sentence over a year from entering politics.

All told, the new One Nation remains a loose collection of petty tyrants and wildly incoherent demagogues bound together by their willingness to exploit fear and suspicion and ignorance, even as they masquerade as heroes. At best, they will turn on each other, fall apart and represent nothing more than waste of time and taxpayer dollars. At worst, they are a symptom of a deeper problem, and a sign of things to come.

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