One Nation leader Pauline Hanson walked into a sold out Crown Perth ballroom on Tuesday morning, and the moment The West Australian's editor in chief Christopher Dore suggested her immigration policy was "a version of a White Australia policy", the room he was hosting turned on him. Hundreds of business leaders booed the question, and one man shouted "idiot".
"No, it's not. No, it's got nothing to do with that. That's not to do with the White Australia policy at all. So don't go there with me, I'll tell you what, because I won't stand for it," Ms Hanson said, to cheers.
The morning mattered because of where it happened. One Nation has been climbing in the polls for six months, recent surveys have put Ms Hanson's name in the preferred prime minister conversation, and Labor is defending the state seat of Secret Harbour in a WA by election on Saturday, 29 August. A room full of Perth business leaders siding with her over the editor of the state's biggest newspaper tells you where that contest is heading.
Video: Sky News Australia. Pauline Hanson takes Christopher Dore's White Australia question at the Leadership Matters breakfast.
Leadership Matters is Seven West Media's ticketed breakfast series for Western Australia's business and professional community, and Tuesday's event in the Grand Ballroom at Crown Perth sold out. Ms Hanson delivered a keynote on her upbringing, migration and the economy, then sat down for an on stage interview with Mr Dore.
For readers who need the history: the White Australia policy was the framework that restricted non European migration to Australia for most of last century. Gough Whitlam's government dismantled the last of it in 1973.
Dore asked how she justified singling out one faith group in her migration policy, and she answered with the numbers she carries into every interview.
"Chris, at the moment, we've got 18,000 people on the ASIO watch list. We've got a real problem that's growing in this country of radicalisation," she told the room. "I don't want people coming to this country from radical Islamic countries. I don't want that here. I want to protect the Australian people. I want them to feel safe in the streets. I don't want to see this antisemitism that's going on."
Dore pressed.
"I mean, is that, in a way though, that is a version of a White Australia policy, isn't it?" he asked.
The boos started before she said a word, and the "idiot" call came from the floor. When she finished her answer, the same room cheered.
Hanson asked Dore one question back and the ballroom laughed at his silence
Hanson then flipped the interview.
"Let's go back to the question, that was from Tommy Robinson, the last question. Do you know exactly what he said to me?" she asked.
Dore said nothing, and the ballroom laughed. The question, from her sit down with the British activist published last week, was about when Sudanese and Somali migration to Australia began. Her answer was a date: 1973, when the Whitlam government ended the White Australia policy. Citing the year a policy ended, she argued, is not the same as calling for it back.
"I have never advocated for the White Australia policy. I've had people from all different cultural backgrounds that stood for us for Parliament, and it's not about skin colour, it's not about your race, colour, creed. It's who you are, that you stand up for the values and for this nation," she said.
Bondi, Gaza and the Trump ticket: the case she put to the room
Her argument to the breakfast leaned on the attack at Bondi last December, the one Australians are still paying for in security funding.
"We've had a number of terrorist attacks by Muslims in Australia. We've just had the biggest one ever, last December, at Bondi," she said. "We've got to call out the elephant in the room."
She turned the same scepticism on the government's Gaza intake.
"I wouldn't have brought any of those people out from Gaza. There was only 24 hours investigation into them. How do we know who they are? Go and ask Britain, Germany, France. All those people that are going over there, go and ask them if it's working out for them," she said.
Pressed on which countries a migration ban would actually cover, she said the list would be drawn up in government.
"This will be discussed with the departments and having a look at where migrants are coming from. I'm sure ASIO would give us a better understanding which countries," she said.
And she pointed to Donald Trump's deportation program as the model she likes.
"Trump said, OK, all those that are in the country illegally, I will actually give you a one-way ticket out of the country. Then you can apply to come back in some time later. But if you don't go, you will never get back in the country again. Over 2 million took that one-way ticket, and 600,000 they had to round up. Fine, I think that's a great way of doing it," she said.
She also returned to the burqa, telling the room that around 24 countries, some of them Islamic, have banned full face coverings because they stop people assimilating, and recalling that the Senate refused to even let her introduce a bill to do the same here. That refusal produced one of the most famous moments of her career, the day in 2017 she walked into the Senate chamber wearing one.
The West's newsroom runs partly on Labor's money
There's a detail readers deserve alongside the questioning. One News revealed this week that Labor's $67.6 million Journalism Assistance Fund part pays the journalists at 184 newsrooms, roughly $39,000 per full time journalist over three years, with no requirement to disclose it to readers.
West Australian Newspapers Limited, publisher of The West Australian, was granted $4,084,080 from that fund. Seven Network Operations was granted $5,594,160 and Prime Television Southern $1,651,650, which is $11,329,890 across the three entities that sat under the Seven West banner. The breakfast itself was presented by Seven West Media WA.
It's the same stable whose Spotlight program promised an immigration special this month and aired a hit job on Ms Hanson instead. On stage, Mr Dore also asked who paid for her trip to Italy and London with Gina Rinehart, a question One News has covered.
"It did not cost the taxpayer one cent for my trip overseas. I wish they'd question Albanese's friendship with Pratt and Twiggy Forrest, and then you've got he went to Kyle Sandilands' wedding. No one else gets the question like I do," she said.
For all that, The West's own account of the morning ran under a headline calling her "Celebrity Pauline" with a thunderous ovation, and the paper's same day editorial conceded she "is finding her people". The ovation was theirs to report, and they reported it.
"I could do it": Hanson leaves Perth with a seat to win
Asked about the polling that has pushed her name into the prime ministerial conversation, she didn't blink.
"It would be a huge responsibility. I could do it. I have no doubt about that," she said. "I want the right person in the right job, and if someone that I believe can do a better job than I can, you go for it. To pull this country back out of the quagmire that we're in."
She announced a national listening tour to build One Nation's election platform from voters' answers to one question: what's holding you back?
"Canberra stopped listening to ordinary Australians. One Nation has not," she said.
The room got a dose of WA flattery with substance behind it.
"Western Australia helps to pay this nation's bills. Your royalties fund the services here. Your taxes fund them everywhere else," she said.
She'll be back in Perth before Saturday, 29 August, when One Nation runs Luke Herdegen in Secret Harbour, and she's vowed to put Labor last on the party's how to vote cards. The few dozen protesters outside Crown were kept well away by police, and she told the room she'd seen them before, in Perth, in 1998.
"They were just as nasty and aggressive as what they are these days," she said. "But people still came out. They wanted to hear what I had to say."
