The month of May was all about our elected officials and senior public servants responding to questions relating to the federal budget.

Fairly dry stuff, you’d think.

But this year, that wasn’t the case.

Since Australia’s new mongrel Senate took shape in July last year, the upper house has had no shortage of outlandish characters.

And when any given Senator could be the subject of their own TV series – and, potentially, a failed spin-off – then you know the questions asked in estimates are going to be worth their weight in comedy gold.

There was one figure who loomed large at this year’s budget estimates and that was One Nation leader Pauline Hanson.

Senator Hanson facing off with the ABC was one of last week’s most mouth-watering match-ups.

Going toe-to-toe with a representative from the broadcaster, Senator Hanson demanded to know why One Nation had been “targeted” on recent episodes of Four Corners and 7.30, which aired allegations of misconduct by the party.

New South Wales Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, who was sitting on Senator Hanson’s right, couldn’t help himself.

“Because it looked like you broke the law!” he cried, with a mix of incredulity and exasperation.

Senator Hanson, unsurprisingly, flared up.

“I want a retraction from you,” she told Senator Ludlam.

“I have not broken the law.”

NSW Labor Senator Sam Dastyari offered running commentary from the other side of the room, describing the fracas as “too good”.

Then, in an agriculture and water resources hearing, Senator Hanson suggested Collingwood Football Club president Eddie McGuire was one of the “largest water-holders” in Victoria.

She appeared to link this wild claim with the Agenda 21 conspiracy theory, the proponents of which believe the UN is plotting to take away our fundamental rights through the vehicle of climate action.

And then she alarmed a roomful of people when she shared with them something she had heard: that cows are – brace yourself -alive when they are slaughtered under halal certification.

But Senator Hanson wasn’t the only One Nation Senator who made headlines for their far-out antics during estimates.

Queensland One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts, a diminutive conspiracy theorist who believes climate change is a hoax designed to institute a new world order, contended with CSIRO and Australia’s chief scientist Alan Finkel.

Marking perhaps the first and last time ‘conceptual penises’ were mentioned in a parliamentary context, Senator Roberts cited a peer-reviewed paper that claimed penises caused climate change.

Senator Roberts doesn’t agree with the paper’s line of thought – not even he tolerates conspiracies that kooky.

Rather, he used it as a means of bolstering his argument that the peer-review process was broken, which, apparently, was the argument of the paper’s authors, too.

Science Minister Arthur Sinodinos was on hand to rein Senator Roberts in.

“We really are in a very Kafkaesque world,” he said, throwing his hands up.

Never has that been clearer than when tuning in to the budget estimates in 2017.

All that was missing was Rod Culleton.