EDITORIAL: Unpolished and unflinching — Hanson is finding her people

It was a moment which captured one of the factors driving the rise of Pauline Hanson.

It came during a breakfast function in Perth on Tuesday. “I’m not extreme,” Senator Hanson said.

“People say to me ‘but you’re only saying what we are thinking’.

“But I’ve got the guts to get out there and say it.”

It sparked a loud round of applause and some cheering. It felt like the quiet Australians believed they had found someone to speak for them. A group who felt the national political debate disregarded them, spoke down to them or even outright cancelled them if they spoke up.

So they had for a long time mostly stayed quiet, just emerging from time to time, like when they went about dismantling Anthony Albanese’s pet project, the Voice, in 2023.

But now Senator Hanson’s outspokenness — on display at The West Australian’s sold out Leadership Matters event — has found its audience. And it is growing.

And they are sending the One Nation polling numbers surging upwards.

The narrative went on.

Hanson the outsider. “I have been put down, denigrated, criticised,” she said.

“I just think, ‘no’, I believe in myself, I believe in what needs to be done for this country.”

But also: “A lot of the people in that place (Canberra) I wouldn’t even give them the time of day.

“You tell me one of the Greens that you would want to spend time with”.

There was another burst of approval. And laughs. They lapped it up.

The address as a whole hit all the usual key Hanson points. Canberra was not listening to ordinary Australians. The country was being held back by the overspending and overtaxing Government.

The “elephant in the room” — radical Islam — needed to be called out. There was no place for the burqa. She would not stand in front of three flags.

“Under a One Nation government there will only be one flag.” Cue the cheers again.

Granted, this was a Hanson crowd. But it was hard to ignore the enthusiasm, the willingness to cheer for her and heckle if they thought a question was unfair.

Hanson versus the media.

And then there was the clip of her offsider Barnaby Joyce yelling at a dog off screen to “siddown” during an interview the night before that had gone viral.

Rather than being a moment from which to recoil, it was simply “that’s Barnaby”.

“This is why I love the people around me, we are just humans,” she said.

The rough edges, the unpolished speaking and presentation style. The underdog status. Those in the crowd on Tuesday who maybe turned up just curious about Senator Hanson will have gone home rusted on.

And they will be telling their partners, parents, neighbours, the local mechanic, butcher and bloke at the bottle shop that they too are now believers.

And so the Hanson phenomenon gathers momentum.

This a political moment the likes of which this country has not seen.

The refreshing thing that sets Senator Hanson apart from every other Australian politician is she answers questions.

She goes there, doesn’t take a backward step and is willing to call it as she sees it. She’s not hiding behind anything.

If the major party leaders could emulate that, Australian politics would be in a much healthier place.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore