I don’t know if you’ve heard, but One Nation’s back.

That’s been the story since the last federal election in 2016. Helped immeasurably by that full-Senate election, the far-right minor party won four Senate seats, which at the time did not surprise the people One Nation targets.

It was their best ever result at a federal election in terms of seats, and their best since 2001 in terms of vote percentage.

Since then much of the media have treated the party as if it represents a new and unstoppable force in Australian politics.

Besides the lifetime seat reserved for Pauline Hanson on the nation’s morning TV show couches, and the blatant cheerleading many of Australia’s biggest talkback radio personalities engage in on the party’s behalf, One Nation candidates can rustle up acres of free press with nothing more than a racist thought bubble dressed up as a policy proposal.

One Nation's level of representation will almost certainly go backward

For many people, the election of former Labor leader-turned-One Nation candidate Mark Latham to the New South Wales upper house at the state election on Saturday seemed to confirm that the party is now a permanent part of our political landscape.

But throwing up our hands in despair and conceding that One Nation is here to stay would be premature. Twenty years ago, One Nation enjoyed a greater level of power and support than it does now. That power was broken, at least for a time, and there’s no reason to think it can’t be broken again.

It’s worth comparing One Nation’s performance in contemporary elections with how it did during its heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In general, the party’s electoral renaissance in recent years has been smaller and less successful than its first go-round, and is already starting to show signs of slowing down.

While One Nation only won a single Senate seat at the 1998 federal election, it performed incredibly well for a new political movement. It won more than one million votes in the Senate and nearly as many in the House of Representatives. It outpolled the Democrats, becoming Australia’s third-largest party in terms of votes.

In Queensland four months earlier – its first real electoral test – it won an astonishing 22.68% of the vote, picking up 11 seats. It got over 6.5% of the vote in New South Wales in 1999, electing David Oldfield to the Legislative Council. In Western Australia’s 2001 poll, One Nation gained nearly 10% in the state’s upper house.

The party would give its right arm for those kind of results now. One Nation’s performance in recent elections has smacked a little of a John Farnham farewell tour; the same old act, with steadily diminishing returns.

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In Queensland in 2017, it gained 13.73%; still impressive, but well down on its peak in 1998. Earlier that year in WA, One Nation’s vote in the lower house more than halved from 2001. While counting is still under way in NSW, the party is tracking to win about 5.85% in the upper house; again, lower than in 1999.

The four senators One Nation elected in 2016 came off the back of a national primary vote of 4.28%, helped mightily by a halved electoral threshold thanks to Malcolm Turnbull’s decision to hold a full-Senate election.

One Nation’s vote will not collapse at the next federal election. It has the profile and resources that come with elected office, and a media still far too willing to give its candidates a helping hand.

But its level of representation will almost certainly go backward, and its relevance with it. It’s unlikely to re-elect Peter Georgiou in WA, or gain back the seat Brian Burston won in NSW. A Labor government – especially one led in the Senate by Penny Wong – would be much less inclined to play footsie with the far-right than the current administration.

Australian political history is littered with weird, minor-party reactionaries who quietly withered away after years on unfriendly crossbenches.

One Nation’s parliamentary representation and polling numbers are not one-to-one ciphers for the racism ethnic and religious minorities across Australia endure, or the broader public’s willingness to engage in and indulge it.

One Nation’s first collapse in the early 2000s was at least partly prompted by John Howard’s co-opting its rhetoric and policies, which have now seeped through our politics.

But One Nation’s success relies, in large part, on the political establishment’s willingness to invite it inside the building.

Neither the Christchurch terrorist attack nor the party’s soliciting donations from the National Rifle Association are likely to turn off committed One Nation voters. What has changed, though, are the likely consequences for major parties tempted to do deals with the far-right.

While his newfound commitment to combat “tribalism” may be questionable (to put it mildly), Scott Morrison is under enormous pressure to preference the party last, or at least behind Labor and the Greens.

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Moderate Liberal MPs are rushing to endorse that strategy, even as their Liberal-National colleagues in Queensland push for the opposite. After being asked some difficult questions, for once, by Sunrise’s David Koch after Christchurch, Hanson quit her weekly guest spot on his show.

Asked to explain the behaviour he displayed in the al-Jazeera report, One Nation Queensland leader Steve Dickson cited a global Islamist conspiracy straight out of “James Bond magazines”.

The way Hanson lashes out at even the mildest criticism is a reminder that, at its core, One Nation is a party of bullies, and that bullies flounder when they confront genuine resistance. The mask of strength One Nation hides its emptiness behind is riddled with cracks.

For anti-racists, that should be reason enough to work twice as hard for One Nation’s second downfall. It means holding the media to account for giving special treatment to far-right politicians and the racism they trade in.

It means raising the voices of Muslim Australians, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and migrants when they warn us of the consequences of attacking ethnic and religious minorities. It means pressuring major-party politicians not just to distance themselves from One Nation, but from their worldview.

To regard Hanson, Latham and their kind as inevitable is to concede them a primacy they haven’t earned and don’t deserve. The only way racism’s place in our polity can ever be truly secure is if we give up.