Never mind that the joint parliamentary inquiry itself has its serious detractors – not least of all anti-violence campaigner Rosie Batty and a swathe of anti-domestic violence groups, the federal opposition and the Greens. It’s that the One Nation leader has already demonstrated her lack of fitness for the job by accusing women of fabricating domestic violence claims in order to get custody of their children. Pauline Hanson launches One Nation in Ipswich in 1997 with son Adam and daughter Lee. Credit:Robert Rough Perhaps she should read – if she hasn’t already – Jess Hill’s recently published book See What You Made Me Do, in which she documents with chilling accuracy the nature of domestic abuse in Australia. Or maybe just the chapter entitled “The Abusive Mind” in which she recounts the case of one woman having her hair ripped out in chunks, while being smothered and raped. She’s screaming and begging for the man to stop, and he’s saying, “I’m doing this because I love you.” “The evidence tells us,” Hill writes, “that such scenes play out every day and night across Australia: in suburban homes and town camps, apartment blocks and waterfront homes. The abusers are men who are prominent and successful, men who work regular jobs, men who are mentally ill, men with drinking problems, men who work their guts out for minimum wage, and men who expect their partners to earn all the money and do all the housework.

“Men who say they love their partners. Men who say they want equal rights for women. Men who think most chicks are dumb sluts begging to be raped. Men who often show no signs they are capable of such sadism.” And although this kind of abuse is being experienced by one in four Australian women, the Australian Prime Minister thinks it appropriate to appoint as deputy chair of such an inquiry (arch conservative Kevin Andrews has been named chairman) a person who believes women frequently concoct family violence stories. She rarely smiled. Perhaps that was because she was understandably terrified of being misquoted by the media. Twenty-three years ago, in October 1996, I had the dubious privilege of being the first journalist to profile Pauline Hanson for a major publication. It was in the Herald and The Age’s Good Weekend and I spent four weeks researching her life and political career, interviewing – on and off the record – dozens of people. I conducted three interviews with Hanson herself, one at her home, two in her office, one month after Hanson had delivered her incendiary maiden speech to Parliament, where she’d called for the abolition of multiculturalism and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC); denounced so-called indigenous privilege, and warned that Australia was in danger of being “swamped by Asians”. The first thing I noticed when I met Hanson was that she seemed both artless and angry. (And that she broke the law when she drove – hurtling way above the speed limit down the Cunningham Highway towards her 65 ha farm at dusk as I tried to follow. She’d invited me home for dinner.)

The next thing I noticed was that she rarely smiled. Perhaps that was because she was understandably terrified of being misquoted by the media. But alongside that was her distortion of facts, her reliance on hearsay, her savage and emotional denunciations and over-simplification of complex issues. And, of course, there was ignorance, too – wilful or not – about the plight of Indigenous Australians and women. “I think the most downtrodden person in this country is the white Anglo-Saxon male,” she told me. “I think they’re at the bottom of the barrel. It’s got to the stage where I think the balance has swung too far [in favour of women] and men don’t know what to do. 'Gee, do I open the door or don’t I? Is she a feminist or is she not?’” “Are you a feminist?" I asked her.

“No,” she replied without hesitation. “What’s the worst thing that has ever happened to you?” I wondered. “Don’t know,” she said. “What about the best thing?” “When I got divorced.”

“From your first or second husband?” Pauline Hanson in the front yard of the family home in Ipswich with three of her children: Adam, Lee and Amanda. Hanson laughed. “That’s two good things,” she replied, and as she did so the look on her daughter’s face – she was sitting next to us – literally crumpled. During my research it became abundantly clear that Hanson was estranged from her eldest son, and had been for the previous six years. (I declined to name him then, as I do now, in order to protect his privacy.) He’d been effectively raised by his paternal grandmother, a survivor of Dachau concentration camp, who was terrified Hanson wanted her deported. Hanson was also at that time not on speaking terms with her second son (she has a third son and daughter from her second marriage), although that estrangement was a more recent tear to the family fabric.

When I probed Hanson on her two marriages, she rebuffed my questions, but castigated her two elder sons for not showing her sufficient respect. “Now, I’ve gone out of my way to look after the children … because they are my responsibility and nobody else’s,” she said. “And when your children turn around and give you a kick … you sort of think, what for? I’ve done nothing wrong.” “Why did they give you a kick,” I asked. “Because they don’t like what I have apparently told them [about not showing me enough respect]. I am not going to be used by anyone, even my own children, and expect to cop it.” There is every possibility that these relationships have since healed – I certainly hope so for all their sakes – but on the basis of what I learnt then, it is a preposterous notion that Pauline Hanson should present herself – despite pushing for this inquiry for more than a year – as any kind of dispassionate expert on the notoriously fraught and highly charged issues surrounding family law and child custody. Or that she would cast such doubt on the veracity of women when violence against women is a global pandemic, arguably the most systematic and pervasive human rights abuse in the world; and where, in Australia, one woman is killed on average each week by a man.