"Australia for Australians" is the headline on Pauline Hanson's One Nation party's webpage outlining what the resurgent party is all about.

The truistic message crystalises a sentiment that appeals to disenchanted voters, according to Matt Burnett, Mayor of Gladstone, Queensland, where support for the party is among its highest in the nation.

"I don't know if it's just anti-Islam," he told Fairfax Media on Monday. "I think it's more about Australians first … That has probably resonated here."

Putting Australians first, at least according to One Nation's website, translates into a platform of economic protectionism – particularly ending foreign sales of agricultural land – drastic immigration control and cultural preservation that indubitably strays into Islamophobia.

That platform and Ms Hanson's name recognition have persuaded 339,005 voters – or 4.12 per cent of the Australian electorate – to put One Nation first on the Senate ballot. In Queensland, the party got 9.16 per cent of Senate first preferences, doing particularly well in regional areas including around Gladstone and also inland west of Brisbane.

Ms Hanson is back – as a serious force. With preferences, she will take a seat in the Senate, probably joined by a colleague from Queensland and one from New South Wales, with a fourth seat from Western Australia also a chance.

What has driven this success? It is what Griffith University political lecturer Paul Williams called "a perfect storm" for Ms Hanson: dissatisfaction with major parties, the end of the mining boom hitting regional areas such as Gladstone, a lacklustre federal election campaign. Other commentators have added that the removal of Tony Abbott as prime minister has driven conservative voters away from the Coalition.

Dr Williams and others stressed One Nation voters were not simply a pack of racists and Islamophobes. If anything, she had "tried to reform her image and move it away from race", making it less of an issue than she did back in 1996 when she was first elected to Parliament.

He pointed out that anti-Islam parties such as the Australian Liberty Alliance, which had a YouTube endorsement last week from the Dutch campaigner Geert Wilders, did not perform well.

Rather, voters are motivated by what calls a "ball of disenchantment" that conflates concerns about the economy, the future, the remoteness of the major parties and the effects of immigration.

"Most of her vote comes from people who just think mainstream politicians are all a bunch of crooks and aren't listening, and Hanson is 'one of us'."

Ms Hanson, he stressed, did a lot of shoe-leather campaigning in regional Queensland.

Former Labor federal minister Craig Emerson, a Queenslander, offered a similar analysis, calling it the "up-yours vote".

"It's people raging against the machine and the machine is Canberra politics. They believe the system isn't working for them."

Malcolm Turnbull had unintentionally fuelled this with his "exciting time" rhetoric, he said.

People in regional Queensland "aren't excited, they're worried", he said. "They don't live in Malcolm Turnbull's new economy but in the old economy. He was effectively sending them a message that they're buggered."

Former Howard government minister turned political commentator Peter Reith cited the economic protectionist message as the foremost factor.

"Protectionism is still alive and well in Australia … If things aren't going as well as people would like them to go, then they're looking for answers of that sort."

Dr Williams said support could be tracked quite clearly to areas that were hurting economically. Mr Burnett said the LNG downturn around Gladstone had slashed the number of fly-in, fly-out workers from about 14,000 to 4000 with more cuts to come.

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