Pauline Hanson at a meeting at the Paddington Ale House in Perth as she met potential One Nation candidates for Western Australia.

According to Pauline Hanson it's "a load of rubbish and a most ridiculous statement".

She's talking to AFR Weekend about descriptions of One Nation as a "populist" party, meaning it offers simple, appealing solutions for complex problems like migration (ban Muslims), restricting foreign investment, and banking (hold a royal commission).

As the One Nation leader has flown around West Australia in the past week preparing for Saturday's state election, she's been followed by a flurry of contradictory forecasts: the party has peaked, its polling numbers are up (then down), it will (won't) hold the balance of power in the WA Upper House, Senator Hanson made a mistake entering into a preference deal with the Liberal Party, and so on.

The one point all this attention confirms is that eight months after her Lazarus-like re-emergence on the Australian political scene, Pauline Hanson may not be calling the shots yet. But her actions are having a significant bearing on the fortunes of the major parties and their leaders, particularly Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

So it's significant that the One Nation leader is now in stabilisation mode. After a week in which she encountered strong push back over on-again, off-again comments about parents refusing to have vaccinations given to their children; disputes among WA One Nation supporters concerning a preference deal with the Liberals; threats of legal action following the abrupt dismissal of local One Nation staff and speculation about Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's future, Senator Hanson is adopting a "steady as she goes" posture.

Criss-crossing the backblocks of Australia's biggest state, she alights from a flight to Geraldton, north of Perth, to tell AFR Weekend that "the future voting pattern" throughout Australia "is hard to predict" and "we've got a long way to go". Emphasising a longer-term approach, she opines: "We have to gain the trust of people."

Senator Hanson's measured tone is a long way from vapid "please explain" comments made during TV interviews after One Nation first burst on the scene in the late '90s.

Now she says "people just want honesty, they want integrity. There's so much room in Australian politics for the policies of One Nation." However, "I've got to prove myself to people" so "more [One Nation candidates] will get elected to Parliament and people will start to realise we're not in extremis."

But if One Nation is not "in extremis," then what is it? Alexander Lefebvre, a professor in the departments of Government and International Relations, and Philosophy, at Sydney University, says "the nativism of her Party", like calling for the banning of Muslim migration to Australia and banning Muslim women from covering their faces by wearing the burqa in public, "strikes me as a right [wing] version of populism".

Professor Lefebvre says "this is the populism we're seeing all over the world". It will be tested in elections in Holland on Wednesday where the poll-topping, far-right Party for Freedom wants to close all mosques, Islamic schools and asylum centres, impose a blanket ban on migration from Islamic countries, and stop women from wearing a headscarf in public.

Meanwhile in France, the leader of the far-right National Front, Marine le Pen, who faces presidential elections in April-May, wants to "expel foreigners who preach hatred on our soil" and to strip dual-nationality Muslims with extremist views of their French citizenship.

According to Lefebvre, this is the sort of populism that is "predominantly based on contempt for foreigners and contempt for elites". It received a global boost when Donald Trump won the US Presidential election on November 8 last year, and followed up with temporary entry bans into the US of people from six (at first it was seven) Muslim majority countries.

She may eschew the populist mantle, but Pauline Hanson says "people have been screaming out to governments to listen to their concerns. Governments have failed to listen to their concerns and treated them like morons and taken them for granted. That's why people speak to us."

The major political parties "have picked up many of my policies," she says, instancing the abolition of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission and introduction of offshore processing of refugees who arrive off Australia's shores by boat, plus temporary protection visas under the Howard government.

She acknowledges her hardline stance on Islam is "possibly" part of the reason why One Nation has been faring better in national polls since the federal election, "but not all of it. I haven't spoken very much about Islam" compared with issues like the level of foreign investment in Australia.

Meanwhile her support for the Fair Work Commission's decision to cut Sunday penalty rates for retail and hospitality workers and back further spending cuts in May's Budget are examples of more mainstream conservatism.

So Pauline Hanson is a work in progress.

Continue reading here:

Pauline Hanson still a work in progress after all these years - The Australian Financial Review