Political elites have had a tough time of it lately, and Australia's are no exception.
The Australian people did not do what was expected in Saturday's federal election. They chose to give neither major party a clear mandate and they sent a politician who rejects multiculturalism and wants the burqa banned back into government almost two decades after she first left it.
SEE ALSO: How to save your relationship from a Brexit breakupThe results are still being counted, but Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party seem likely to have won at least two Senate seats. Who is Hanson, the Australian incarnation of Donald Trump, Sarah Palin or Nigel Farage? Many thought she had been lost to the dusty annals of political history, but no. She's back.
Pauline Hanson's autobiography: "Untamed and Unashamed." Credit: Getty Images Political resurrection
Pauline Hanson, 62, has returned after 18 years.
While Asian immigrants were her target during her first introduction into politics in 1996, as part of her run for the Senate in 2016, Hanson took on the Muslim community.
One Nation calls for an official inquiry to determine if Islam is a religion or political ideology, among other policies. Here it is in full:
Credit: One Nation That's not to say she has fully embraced the presence of Asian-Australians. During a press conference Monday, she was queried about her comment in 1996 that Australia was in danger of being "swamped by Asians."
"You go and ask a lot of people in Sydney, at Hurstville or some of the other suburbs," she said. "They feel they have been swamped by Asians and regardless of that now, a lot of Australians feel that Asians are buying up prime agricultural land, housing."
Tweet may have been deleted
"I'd like to know what they're actually teaching in those schools and what's being said in the mosques," she added. "You can't deny the fact that in these mosques they are known to preach hate towards us."
She has claimed her initial 1996 quote about Asian-Australians was taken out of context, but it still appears on her website.
The party also has has a "zero net" immigration policy and believes drug addicts should have their assets seized to pay for treatment. Hanson also calls for multiculturalism -- the acceptance of Australia as a society with many languages, ethnicities and cultures -- to be abandoned in favour of assimilation.
Hanson has yet to reply to Mashable's request for comment.
'Please explain?'
Hanson first emerged as a political candidate in 1996.
She won the seat of Oxley as an independent after being unendorsed by the Liberal Party for her comments about federal assistance for Aboriginal people. "I said they [Aboriginal Australians] receive privileges that other people don't receive because they're Aboriginal, which is true and you cannot deny that," Hanson said in a 1996 interview on 60 Minutes.
She went on to form the One Nation party in 1997.
Once a fish and chip shop owner, she cultivated a naive persona in media appearances. Draped in the Australian flag, her appeal seemed steeped in nostalgia for a white, stable Australia that never existed, dressed up with nuggets of anti-immigrant fear she'd toss every so often to supporters.
Australian One Nation Party leader Pauline Hanson poses beside her poster during the election campaign for the Queensland State election in Toowoomba, Australia Wednesday, June 10, 1998. Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS Her inaugural speech in parliament decried "reverse racism," where Aboriginal people were given benefits over other Australians.
Her maiden speech also hinted at her appeal to white Australians whose economic and social dominance was being eroded by the loss of manufacturing jobs and, they believed, changing demographics.
"I may be only 'a fish and chip shop lady,' but some of these economists need to get their heads out of the textbooks and get a job in the real world. I would not even let one of them handle my grocery shopping," Hanson said.
The birth of Pauline 'Pantsdown'
Hanson immediately became an object of ridicule for many urban Australians, who shared little in common with the base that elected her.
If you were an Australian child in 1990s, there is no doubt you knew every word to the song "I Don't Like It." Created by Simon Hunt, the musical parody cobbled together audio clips of some of the politician's most notorious comments with Hunt as Hanson in drag.
Many of her phrases became instantly ridiculed, such as her response on 60 Minutesto a question about the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras: "I don't like it," she said. "It's not natural." (3.34) When asked later in the interview if she was xenophobic, she responded with the instantly iconic, "Please explain?" (13.14)
For the groups she targeted, however, among them Asian immigrants, Indigenous Australian communities and LGBTQ people, there was little to joke about.
Linda Burney, the first Indigenous Australian woman to be elected into the House of Representatives, commented on Hanson's return on LatelineTuesday. "You cannot excuse stupidity for ignorance and that's what is being displayed," she said. "There is no excuse for racism."
A turn on Dancing with the Stars
After losing her seat in 1998 and being forced out of her party in 2002, Hanson wandered for a time in the political wilderness.
She and One Nation's national director David Ettridge faced criminal charges for election fraud, and Hanson was sentenced to three years in jail in 2003, although the charges were later overturned.
Hanson ran for a slew of other political positions over the years, including a seat in New South Wales parliament in 2011, but with no success.
Pauline Hanson, center, embraces her sons Steven Hanson, right, and Tony Zagorski as she speaks to the media after her release from prison Thursday, Nov. 6, 2003. Credit: AP In 2004, she did as all minor celebrities on the brink of the abyss must do: She became a contestant on Australia's first-ever edition of Dancing with the Stars. Hanson lost to Home and Away actor, Bec Cartwright.
Still, she didn't entirely sink from the public conversation. Hanson was paid to provide commentary on Channel 7's breakfast show Sunrise, News.com.aureported. This valuable, and questionable, point of entry into Australian living rooms saw her opinion sought on subjects like vaccination: "I had my kids vaccinated, but I tell you what, I'd think twice about it these days," she said on the show in January.
"When the government brought in people from African countries, and only 37 percent were actually tested for diseases. Now Tony Abbott admitted that when he was health minister. I think the government needs to step up first and ensure the people they bring in the country don't carry these diseases."
Pauline Hanson busts a move on the hit show "Dancing With The Stars" in Sydney, Nov. 23, 2004. Credit: AAP Image/Channel 7/Les O'Rourke How did we end up here?
For many Australians, Hanson's return seems baffling. Her message, straight from the 1990s, does not seem relevant to a largely thriving, multicultural society.
Much like in the U.S. and UK, there is a narrative forming in Australia about communities, often in regions where blue collar work is being lost, that feel overlooked and unloved by the political establishment.
To discover the sentiments that got Hanson re-elected, it's worth watching the Queensland episode from TV and radio presenter Dan Ilic's Twitchhike, in which he hitchhikes around Australia asking people who they were voting for.
Repeatedly, he's told by local voters they just don't connect with the Labor or Liberal Parties. "I think just like about 90 percent of the rest of the voters in this country, the two major parties are just crap," one man said. "I think Pauline Hanson will finally, and deservedly, get her shot."
Support for One Nation is not back, but rather, it never went away, Paul Williams, a senior lecturer at Griffith University, told Mashable Australia,
"It was there, but wasn't focused," he said. "It takes a Pauline Hanson to focus it."
In his view, a perfect storm of factors allowed Hanson back into government. Changes to how Australia votes for the Senate helped get her over the line, but economic factors in Queensland were also significant.
The state has suffered an economic downturn after the decline of the mining boom, which has made it acutely sensitive to changes in industries and job losses.
"She's clearly trying to say it's not about race, it's the economy."
"It's the more important factor than race," he explained. "A lot of people look at Hanson and say she's been elected on the anti-immigration vote, but it's more on the economic idea and fear of change."
Nevertheless, economic fears and immigration fears have long gone hand in hand. Her anti-Muslim rhetoric is also a helpful tool to win votes from the right wing. "She's trying to cover as many bases as possible," Williams added.
Here she is, for example, bridling at the notion she could even eat food acceptable to Muslim people.
This is hardly a new tradition. Queensland has a rural, frontier state mentality that has historically produced maverick, anti-elite politicians.
"Queensland is the home of populism," Williams said. "They see someone from the old conservatism ... and that sounds very attractive to them."
Voters, though, will find Hanson's rhetoric is unlikely to ultimately help them, just as calling for constant surveillance of mosques won't bring back manufacturing jobs.
Have something to add to this story? Share it in the comments.