MARK RILEY: Pauline Hanson’s popularity surge is giving One Nation a false sense of worth

First, a word on opinion polls at this point of the electoral cycle.

That word is “rubbish”.

Two and a half years from the next Federal election, they are about as useful as a screen door on a nuclear-powered submarine.

Second, an observation. There seem to be many people in politics and the media — as in life generally — who have the memory of a goldfish.

The published polls leading up to the 2016 US presidential election told us emphatically that Hilary Clinton was going to romp it in.

She didn’t. Donald Trump did.

And here just late last year the polls told us that Peter Dutton was going to win easily in the Federal election.

He didn’t. In fact, he suffered an historic defeat. He became the first leader since John Howard in 2007 to lose an election and his own seat.

Pollsters keep telling us that surveys conducted so far out from an election should only serve as a temperature check on the electorate.

They give a rough guide to how voters are feeling about their elected representatives at a given point in time.

But because there are no real consequences in what an opinion poll participant says, there is a much higher likelihood that they will use the opportunity to lodge something of a protest.

And that is what people are doing at present.

The latest Newspoll registers One Nation’s primary vote at 15 per cent. That is a jump of 9 percentage points in the party’s primary vote since the May election.

If you believe that, then 1.3 million more Australians are saying today that they will vote One Nation at the next election.

A large proportion of those people would be Liberal and Nationals voters who are understandably ticked off at the way the Coalition parties have conducted themselves since the election.

They are registering a protest by parking their votes in the only off-ramp they can see on the conservative side of politics — and that is One Nation.

Mind you, probably about half of those 1.3 million people would probably give a different answer about their voting intention if they were asked today.

They might have thought that saying they would back Pauline Hanson was something they could do without consequences. And then Hanson walked into the Senate this week dressed in a burqa. Again.

And now they wouldn’t be so sure.

They might also realise that being booted from the Senate for seven days is no big deal for Hanson.

It wouldn’t worry her that she was the first Senator to be handed such punishment for 46 years.

She’ll wear that as a badge of honour. She is the anti-politics politician. She says she respects the Parliament, but a lot of the time she doesn’t turn up. Even when she isn’t suspended.

She didn’t spend a single day of the previous sitting week actually sitting in the Senate or attending to constituent matters in her offices.

She spent it at Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago resort in Florida mixing with big-money US conservative donors at the annual CPAC conference.

She didn’t even seek leave of the Senate to be there. She just went.

That’s what Pauline Hanson thinks of the Parliament.

And among her rusted-on, anti-establishment, anti-authority, anti-government, hardline base, she is lauded for it.

But some of those disaffected Coalition supporters who are parking in the One Nation off-ramp at the moment wouldn’t think much of it.

Barnaby Joyce’s imminent defection might help keep some of them and, then again, might not. Barnaby, like Pauline, is a divisive figure.

Average Australians aren’t spending every waking hour thinking about Federal politics. Indeed, they are doing their best not to think about it. They just want to get on with their lives.

But in a bit over two years, when the country again moves into pre-election mode for real, then those voters will start to focus more deeply about who best represents their values and aspirations.

And when they do that, One Nation’s vote will drop sharply. If Pauline Hanson’s party can poll anywhere near double figures nationally it would be a huge victory for her.

Until then, the published polls will continue to be about as accurate as a two-bob watch. But they will continue to make news. And mischief.

Mark Riley is the Seven Network’s political editor.