Photo by The Climate Reality Project on Unsplash
By Mark Kenny
A version of this article was originally published by The Canberra Times.
Pauline Hanson's first ever appearance at the National Press Club settled some questions - although not many - and invited several more.
The most pressing of them did not even get asked. There was no query about the Trump-doting populist's attitude to joining a US defence of Taiwan, surely the preeminent geo-strategic contingency of our age.
This, despite Hanson declaring, "China is a real big concern for me".
If that wasn't an invitation to probe the issue - given AUKUS doubts, and given that any US-led conflict over the Taiwan Strait would pit the two nuclear-armed superpowers against each other - then what would it take?
The media performance was mostly timid with journalists falling over themselves to appear grateful and raising no objection when a respected colleague became the target of a virulent public slander.
Despite being a lift from the Trump playbook, Hanson's attack occasioned no question or subsequent rebuke.
We did learn some things though from the garbled grab-bag of slogans and slights.
First, there is nothing reassuringly conservative about Pauline Hanson's One Nation party. Its instincts, are unapologetically right-wing, openly conflictual and nation-transforming.
Public servants would be told to comply or be removed - Washington-style.
Net-zero would be abolished along with all the bureaucrats because, well, global warming is a hoax. Multi-culturalism - a unique achievement of modern tolerant Australia - would also be abolished and replaced with an official policy stressing an Australian "monoculture".
Elsewhere, Indigenous programs would be scrapped and the funds returned to "consolidated revenue" - because there are no distinctions based on "race", just one Australia. Assimilate or leave.
As Hanson, proudly encapsulated: "we are one nation under one flag". The defeat of the Voice referendum was the proof.
Also to go would be government departments that don't suit the national reconfiguration, and of course, any laws or instrumentalities deemed woke, progressive, or elite.
The ABC would be slashed and become a subscription service. SBS, established by the Fraser Coalition government and championed by every iteration since, would be scrapped.
It went unremarked that some four million Australians tuned into SBS last Saturday to watch the son of African refugees kick one of the great World Cup goals sending Australia into paroxysms of pride and joy.
But One Nation doesn't do joy. Rather, its grim manifesto, so painfully eked-out, rests on a solid platform of complaint even as it teeters with contradictions.
The tribune of the battlers lapsed into a telling reverence when mentioning "Mrs Rinehart" (who once advocated competing on price with African workers paid $2 a day).
Hanson also forgets herself when defending her consistent opposition to wage rises and better protection by explaining that Australian workers are "lazy" always on their phones and goofing off. Are not these her people?
Then there's the biggest contradiction of all - that a party of nostalgic allure would not restore our best days so much as swiftly end our current ones - on offer is an Australia all but unrecognisable.
She wasn't asked much about that either.
Mark Kenny is the Director of the ANU Australian Studies Institute and host of the Democracy Sausage podcast.