BEN HARVEY: The six words that explain Pauline Hanson’s surge in popularity

Ridiculing Pauline Hanson is something of a blood sport for reporters and newspaper columnists.

There is a professional expectation that you take any interview opportunity to shoot down her policy rationale and steamroll over her logic.

There is pressure to eviscerate her and should you not, you end up feeling that you have somehow failed as a journalist.

If you come even close to suggesting she might have a point about anything, you are reviled as a nazi sympathiser.

Mocking Hanson has for 30 years been the low-hanging fruit of Australian journalism.

For 29-and-a-half of those years, it was as simple as shooting fish in a barrel.

The pile-on-Pauline movement was so very easy to join.

Didn’t know what xenophobia meant? How could such a numbskull be qualified to sit in the Federal Parliament? Never mind that half the country didn’t know the meaning of the word at the time.

As the newbie member for Oxley, the then-42-year-old Hanson was naive, inexperienced and ignorant in matters of economics and geopolitics.

Despite her personal and intellectual shortcomings (and to the delight of the press gallery), she remained opinionated, brash and vocal.

She was the perfect adversary for political hacks — easy to punch and she kept getting off the canvas.

Journos revelled in the fact One Nation was a political joke. The punchlines were writ large in newspaper headlines.

Even at its mightiest high point in 1998, the party could muster only one-fifth of the seats in Queensland’s parliament.

Hanson herself was out of the Federal Parliament after just two years and out of One Nation shortly after that.

Then there was the prison term for electoral fraud and the dramatic appeal victory.

Revelations of a tawdry affair with party Svengali David Oldfield.

The bizarrely conspiratorial “if you are seeing me now, it means I have been murdered” film clip.

Even when she came in from the cold after winning a Senate seat in 2016, her political modus operandi was still stunt over substance.

The decision to wear a burqa in the chamber of the Upper House and the release of the Please Explain cartoon series was further evidence for journalists that Hanson and One Nation would remain political vaudeville.

Not only did she not care, she doubled down — donning the Muslim dress in the Senate again and releasing A Super Progressive Movie.

So, the media pile-on continued. And why not? When you did smack her with the written or spoken word, there was little downside.

Support for her was noisy, but tiny.

The left, which is by far the most vicious part of the Australian political spectrum, could effortlessly drown her out.

Journos didn’t think twice about jumping in the ring with Pauline. They didn’t even bother putting the mouth guard in because they knew she wouldn’t put a glove on them.

That all changed this year. Millions of words have been written about why One Nation has surged in popularity but you only need six to explain the phenomenon: Bondi Beach, ISIS brides, shit Budget.

Two ground-breaking opinion polls in the wake of those events meant the press had to check itself.

Taking the piss out of a party with an approval rating in the single digits is one thing; ridiculing a person and a movement that one in three voters supports is entirely different.

Punters don’t like being told they’re wrong, let alone deplorable, and punters are fickle. Reporters know they are one swipe away from being cancelled, so you can expect the media to treat its long-time sparring partner with more respect in the lead up to the next election.

Journos will still point out her policy flaws, which are legion, but they will do it in a more considered way.

We writers are acutely aware that many of you readers don’t care that what she says is often factually incorrect.

People in the orange wave, like those in Donald Trump’s red one, are so fed up with the status quo they are willing to park their credulity. They crave authenticity — even if it means throwing in with someone the establishment has discounted as authentically bonkers.

“I come here not as a polished politician,” she told us in her first speech in Parliament.

That was delivered at 5.15pm on September 10, 1996.

She remained unpolished for the next three decades but it has only now come into vogue.

Hanson hasn’t done anything special or different to deserve the recent bump in popularity; it’s come largely because her competitors are collapsing around her.

The Steve Bradbury of Australian politics knows that if she stays on her feet, she’ll be in with a fighting chance.