Pauline Hanson has always been a race baiter, always liked the attention - and the cash money - that her ugly rhetoric has brought her. But over the years we were becoming inured to it all as the racist goods she's been peddling became more commonplace.

The Australian media and political landscape is now awash with goons seeking to exploit the sort of far-right tone the Donald Trump presidency has helped legitimise across the West, all of them dedicated to the defence of free speech and the hurt feelings of white men.

Hanson's is not even the only fringe party in parliament obsessed with burqas and halal certification. At the next election she will be competing with Cory Bernardi's Australian Conservatives for the explicitly anti-Islam vote.

While the Attorney-General George Brandis should be congratulated for his quick condemnation of Hanson - as should those senators who sought to ignore her display and get on with their work - the rest of us might use this as an opportunity to reflect on what it is that Hanson actually represents.