True to the cause: Brian Burston, One Nation NSW senator at his home in Coal Point near Newcastle. It was he who convinced her to re-embrace One Nation and now, as one of One Nations' four senators, he is poised to play a pivotal role in Australian politics over the next six years. He said the new One Nation team was a world away from the rabble who won 11 seats in Queensland in 1998, imploded and took Hanson down with them. "They ran dopes, unemployed, inexperienced, not all that intellectual ... we're more cohesive than the previous bunch," Burston said. "We're a more intelligent bunch for a start. "We're not going to be a group that is going to block or run interference. We'll judge everything on its merits."

The polls had barely been declared this week before One Nation was water-boarded after Hanson's Queensland colleague, Malcolm Roberts, a climate change sceptic, was forced to deny membership of a North American anti-government movement. Meanwhile, her West Australian senator Rod Culleton​, a dispossessed farmer, is to go on trial in Perth later this month over allegations he stole a $27,000 hire car last year. Amid such high-profile colleagues, Burston, 68, remains relatively little known. Cessnock born and educated, he was raised a Methodist and at 15 started a boilermaker's apprenticeship with "The BHP" (as the Hunter calls the former Big Australian). He married at 22, had three children, taught at TAFE, trained TAFE teachers at Newcastle University, went into his business as a draftsman – "Some of my best clients are Muslim" – served on Cessnock Council and later divorced his first wife. "They ran dopes, unemployed, inexperienced, not all that intellectual.... we're more cohesive than the previous bunch. We're a more intelligent bunch for a start." Senator Burston

In 1998, Burston met One Nation co-founder David Ettridge​ at Maitland. He ended up standing for the Senate with the other co-founder David Oldfield. Both contested the 1999 NSW, the notorious table cloth ballot paper. Oldfield was elected with 9 per cent of the vote, but Glenn "preference whisperer" Druery's​ deal-making kept Burston off the Upper House red leather. He worked as Oldfield's parliamentary staffer and, amid the Brown's cow madness of the Queensland One Nation MPs and Tony Abbott's sustained attack on the party, Hanson sacked him, collateral damage in the power struggle between herself and Oldfield. Three years later, he was pre-selected but feuded with Oldfield who wanted his wife Lisa as the Upper House candidate. As writs flew, Bev Wallis, Hanson's close friend, a Sylvania Waters resident, rang Burston's mother seeking a rapprochement. Said Burston: "We kissed and made up. She said she always liked me, and I've always liked Pauline. I've got a lot of time for her." Hanson had also started a relationship with Nelson Bay real estate agent Tony Nyquist and was spending time in the Newcastle area.

"We're very close friends now, she stays here often," Burston said. He remarried in 2008 and he and his wife Rosie, a teacher, live in a house overlooking Lake Macquarie. "Pauline was sitting in our lounge room in the summer of 2013 and I said 'Pauline if you ever want to get elected again, you have to get back with One Nation and you must change the name back to Pauline Hanson's One Nation'," Burston said. "She was reluctant at first and wondered who was running things in Queensland, so I rang Ian Nelson [One Nation Queensland state director] and said: 'How'd you like to have Pauline back? Two conditions: I'm her campaign manager and her preference negotiator.' He was very excited." Burston said One Nation would support the Turnbull government on the trade union and registered organisations bills but not on changes to superannuation, unless retrospectivity was removed.

As a son of Cessnock, Burston wants to stop the Wine Equalisation Tax (he's designed and project managed a number of Polkolbin wineries) and seeks $55 million to clean up the RAAF foam spill at Salt Ash north of Newcastle. On wider issues, Burston said One Nation would support whatever Australians decided on the same sex plebiscite, the reconsideration of trade agreements and treaties and tougher criteria for 457 visas. He said multiculturalism had not worked, considers Lakemba in western Sydney "a Centrelink sinkhole", but noted Hanson's comments on Asian immigration were out of date. "The fear of being swamped by Asians has abated. They contribute well to society ... All my GPs have been Chinese, my daughter's married to a Sri Lankan. We're not racist, we're pro Australian."