Only half of Queensland's successful Senate attended the Australian Electoral Commissions formal declaration of results on Friday, but it was the absence of two future One Nation senators – Pauline Hanson and Malcolm Roberts – that loomed large over the proceedings.
Natural Resources Minister Matthew Canavan said the return of One Nation showed the public's trust in its politicians was at one of its lowest ebbs.
Senator Canavan said that was a cause for introspection for the major parties, including his own Liberal National Party.
"I'm not sure if people in Brisbane quite understand how tough places like Townsville are doing right now and that economic upheaval, that economic uncertainty, I believe has fed an opportunity for parties like One Nation," he said.
"The challenge comes back on us.
"Every election has a message in it and every election, the people are right and they get it right and we've got to respect that result now and do better and work harder."
While Labor Senator-elect Murray Watt did not mention One Nation by name, he had a thinly veiled swipe at the Queensland-based party.
"I'm personally very disappointed that we have unleashed in this election campaign and since some very divisive voices within our community," he said.
"There are some people out there who are frankly picking on elements of our community.
"I will personally never stand for that kind of thing. I think that part of our role as political leaders is to try to bring people together and I'll be very loud in my support for all of our communities, multicultural or otherwise."
Senator-elect Roberts has claimed climate change policy was part of a United Nations plot to impose a global government and called for an inquiry into the CSIRO's research.
On Friday, details emerged of a bizarre affidavit he sent to then-prime minister Julia Gillard in 2011 demanding he be exempt from the carbon tax.
Greens Senator Larissa Waters said she was not sure voters knew what they were voting for when they gave One Nation its second Queensland Senate seat.
"I imagine people who voted for One Nation clearly know who Pauline Hanson is and I would infer that they were voting for her rather than, perhaps, other candidates that they may or may not have been aware of," she said.
"You'd have to ask them what their motivations were, but clearly we've seen an economy in transition in Queensland, we've seen communities with huge job losses as the bottom falls out of the coal mining market because the world acknowledges climate change and wants clean energy.
"So people are feeling left behind by the system and I think that's why the vote for the major parties has been so low, because there's been none of that transition work done.
"We've got to bring the community along with us."
Last month's double dissolution election delivered four One Nation senators to Australia's upper house, with two from Queensland and one each from New South Wales and Western Australia.
Senator Canavan said the party would have had its comeback even in a half-Senate election.
Given One Nation received almost 10 per cent of the vote in Queensland, Senator Canavan said Senator-elect Hanson's return to politics was all but inevitable.
"The people who have given One Nation the chance for re-emergence are the people of Australia – they voted them in, they've decided on that and we need to respect that vote of the people," he said.
"The government, I think, made the right decision to go to a double dissolution election to give the people of Australia the opportunity to make up the Senate, because the one that was there before, we must remember, wasn't really reflective of the vote of the people of Australia.
"With all due respect to some of those senators in the previous Senate, they were elected on very small votes that didn't really reflect democratic outcomes, but the preference harvesting and deals that were done under the old Senate rules."
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