The 'Burka Senator' is ahead of her time on Islam. Australia's elite will wish they'd listened - Connie Shaw

Ms Hanson later lost her seat in 1998 and the party fell into chaos - but she was finally re-elected as a senator in 2016 for Queensland, where she still makes waves.

She made international headlines this week after she wore a burka – a full face covering, now implemented by force by the Taliban in Afghanistan – in the Australian Senate after she was refused the right to table her Bill to ban full face coverings in public.

Ms Hanson told me that she was “showing a bit of a protest” against the fact she had been shut down from tabling her Bill.

“They wouldn't allow me to introduce my Bill. So I thought, if you don't want to ban the burka, then I'll go and put on the burka," she said.

She was met with instant and hostile criticism, accused by Mehreen Faruqi, a Muslim Green Senator of "displaying blatant racism”.

Ms Faruqi shouted her accusation over the Speaker, who was trying to regain order.

Green leader Larissa Waters said her protest was "not a genuine demonstration of faith - in fact it is the middle finger to people of faith, it is extremely racist and unsafe".

“They don't want to ban it, but they don't want me wearing it. They're hypocrites,” Ms Hanson said.

A successful motion was passed to suspend her from the senate for a week, stating that her actions were "intended to vilify and mock people on the basis of their religion" and were "disrespectful to Muslim Australians”.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong has previously argued that Hanson is “not worthy of a member of the Australian Senate” despite being the democratically elected senator of Queensland and surging to a new party polling record of 18 per cent, doubling the Greens.

Ms Hanson has been critical of mass immigration and multiculturalism since the 1990s.

In her maiden speech, she said that a "truly multicultural country can never be strong or united”.

Even then, she said “America and Great Britain are currently paying the price”.

Today, these beliefs are classed as a “terrorist ideology” by the British state.

The Prevent programme, which has been rolled out across the public sector, lists “cultural nationalism”, the idea that “Western culture is under threat from mass migration and a lack of interaction by certain ethnic and cultural groups” to be an “extreme right-wing terrorist ideology”.

Despite the criticism and accusations thrown at Hanson for the past 30 years, she said she has received huge support from ordinary Australians, as well as Asian immigrants who she says come up to her and hug her in the street, saying “we don't want this country to become like the place that we left”.

“We're multiracial, but at the end of the day, we must be Australians and who can speak the English language, can assimilate and want to accept and acknowledge our laws and be treated equally under the one law,” she said.

“All I want is people to be proud of this nation, because I respect the men and women that have fought and sacrificed their lives for what we have.”

Many Britons may consider Hanson ahead of her time regarding mass immigration - and particularly, concerns over the influence of the "Muslim vote" in Australia, a conversation that Britain is only now taking seriously here.

In Britain's 2024 General Election, five seats in Parliament were won by independent candidates on the single issue of Gaza.

They were all supported by The Muslim Vote (TMV), an organisation which focuses on seats where “the Muslim vote can influence the outcome”.

Earlier this month, a council by-election in Burnley, where 40 per cent of the population is Muslim, saw a landslide win for two independent Muslim candidates, crushing both Labour and Reform UK.

In Australia, an almost identical organisation has reared its head.

Going by the same name, The Muslim Vote in Australia also supports independent candidates, with their main issue also being "justice for Palestine”, stating that they are “guided by the ethical and moral framework of Islam”.

The British-based TMV and the Australian TMV are strikingly similar.

The Australian group says: “Australian Muslims are a powerful, united force of nearly one million acting in unison. The Muslim Vote alone is capable of forcing the current Government into a minority Government."

The British group says: “‘We will no longer tolerate being taken for granted. We are a powerful, united force of four million acting in unison.”

Another Australian Muslim advocacy group, Muslim Votes Matter, says they are “designed to deliver a minority Labor Government", stating that “in over 20 federal seats, the Muslim community holds the potential deciding vote”.

Their main concern is also a “genocide” in Gaza.

It’s no surprise that Ms Hanson’s explanation for why the other Senators were more concerned about the offence her burka protest may have caused, rather than having an open debate on the issue about national security and women’s rights, was because “they don’t want to upset anyone”.

Speaking about demographic change in Australia, Ms Hanson said that "Muslims dictate who will win" in areas where there are large Muslim populations - concurrent with TMV Australia’s claim.

The One Nation leader says she thinks Australia is five years behind the UK when it comes to the failure of mass migration and multiculturalism.

In Britain, our politicians, authorities and "justice system" are openly cowering to the fear of Islamic repercussions.

During "Islamophobia Month" 2024, Labour backbencher Tahir Ali openly called on the Prime Minister to reintroduce blasphemy laws to “prohibit the desecration of all religious texts and the prophets of the Abrahamic religions”.

The PM’s response was not a flat-out refusal.

Instead, he agreed that desecration of religious texts is “awful”, "should be condemned across the House” and that the Government is committed to tackling “Islamophobia” - adding, with extra emphasis, “in all of its forms”.

Hamit Coskun was found guilty of a Public Order offence this year after he burned a copy of the Koran outside the Turkish Consulate in protest.

According to the prosecution, he was found to have caused harassment, alarm or distress, partly due to the fact he was attacked by an Islamist with a knife, who shouted “I’m going to kill you” as he burned a copy of the book.

The Free Speech Union successfully pushed to overturn this guilty verdict, and he was acquitted.

Now, the CPS wants to overturn that. It seems desperate to find him guilty of blasphemy. Hamit now lives in hiding due to significant and credible threats to his life.

A teacher from Batley Grammar School is still in hiding after he showed a picture of the Prophet Muhammad in a lesson - ironically, about blasphemy.

A mob of Muslim parents protested outside the school, and the teacher received serious death threats.

No one was prosecuted for the death threats, but he now is forced to live a private life with his family as a result.

Of course, Labour had to be dragged kicking and screaming to enact a national inquiry into the rape gangs, predominately committed by men of Pakistani heritage, with the PM previously accusing those of “jumping on a far right bandwagon” for demanding it.

In December 2024, Safeguarding Minister Jess Phillips rejected Oldham Council’s request for Government support to investigate the town’s grooming gangs scandal, as exclusively revealed by GB News’ Charlie Peters.

Ms Phillips also won her seat by fewer than 700 votes, narrowly beating sectarian Muslim candidate Jody McIntyre.

She said it was the “most aggressive” and “most intimidatory" campaign she had ever run in, with “people being told that God will judge them if they vote a certain way”.

Her admissions follow a broader pattern.

After the election, TMV group in Britain made it clear that they were disappointed that many Muslims “still decided to vote Labour… despite the shadow of Gaza hanging over us”.

They might as well have said “we’ve got our eye on you for daring to think for yourself and not falling in line”.

In 1998, Australian former Prime Minister Paul Keating slammed Ms Hanson and One Nation, claiming her concerns were “a myth, a fantasy, a lie”.

Well, 2025 Britain has bad news for 1998 Paul Keating.

If they’re not careful, the Australian political class will have wished they listened to the concerns of Pauline Hanson and her supporters sooner, rather than dismissing them as racist.

They should take Britain's situation as a warning for what could come.