I’m old enough to remember the campaign whipped up by the political left to pressure all political candidates and their parties to put One Nation last on their how-to-vote cards. It was argued that One Nation MP Pauline Hanson was a moral abomination because, in her maiden speech to parliament she had complained that there was too much Asian immigration. This came some months after she had been disendorsed as a Liberal candidate for attacking what she saw as discriminatory benefits given to Indigenous people.

Personally, I didn’t like Hanson’s comments and as the foreign minister I had to deal with the spillover of this issue in the regional English language media. But to put One Nation in perspective, they held just one seat in the House of Representatives and none in the Senate, and exercised no influence over government policies. By the time of the next election in 1998, their most potent issue wasn’t immigration or Indigenous affairs, it was their opposition to the Howard government’s gun laws.