Calling Pauline Hanson racist or treating her like a circus freak guarantees one outcome only: that her beliefs will be reinforced. Instead, point out the issues and explain why she is wrong, writes Michael Bradley.

Pauline Hanson is a racist, said pretty much everyone as soon as the penny dropped that she's coming back to our national Parliament.

"An embarrassment to Australia," proclaimed Bob Carr. Richard Di Natale's glasses fogged up in his Facebook rush to "stand up to Pauline Hanson," her bigotry and her hatred.

What is it about Hanson that makes the political and media establishment go weak in the bladder? She's hardly the only public figure in Australia who expresses views that most of us readily recognise as bigoted, deluded and dangerous. She is, however, the only one who is treated as having the power, with her words alone, to endanger our society.

It's obviously perplexing, because Hanson has always had visible difficulty with her debating skills. She comes across as not very bright, but perpetually very angry and confused; a person who struggles to articulate how she feels about the world beyond saying "I don't like it".

She isn't exactly a charismatic or charming presence. She is certainly not a demagogue. But here she is, with enough votes to secure two, three or four seats in the Senate for her and a few of the odd white men who have sworn fealty to her brand.

It's unclear to me what the difference is between our calling Hanson a racist and her habit of branding other people who she has not met with pejorative labels. What Hanson does - in particular, what she says - is frequently reprehensible. She can appropriately be criticised and called to account for the offence and hurt she causes by her repetitive and irrational attacks on everyone and everything she perceives from her extremely limited frame of understanding to be not representative of the "real Australians", her nostalgically imagined tribe.

But to point out that Hanson is peddling racist views and seeding disharmony in the community is quite different from labelling her a racist. With the exception of the furthest fringe of racial supremacist groups, nobody ever said "yes, you're right, I'm a racist". Hanson is entirely sure that she is not racist, with the same rationale (just less well expressed) as Andrew Bolt has for his equally genuine belief that he is not racist.

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Hanson and many others in Australian public life say things that, from the perspective of marginalised groups such as Indigenous Australians, Muslims or Asians, are hurtful and bigoted. Hanson's response to this calling out is two-fold: she claims innocence of bigotry, because she is only speaking her authentic truth; and she condemns the criticism that she sees as an attempt to silence her.

Look at it from Hanson's perspective: she believes, for example, that Sydney has been "swamped by Asians" as she warned us back in 1996. Her evidence for this is undeniable; obviously, she won't be going anywhere near Hurstville herself (because it's been swamped by Asians), but there really are a lot of people in the streets of Hurstville of Asian appearance.

Now, I may see this as a good thing, since I really like Asian food and culture and I really like human beings generally regardless of how they look. For Hanson, however, this is not a good thing. She's fearful of "Asians", and now they've taken over Hurstville.

She believes that her suburb is next. When you add to this her more recently discovered conviction that Islam is a worldwide conspiracy of conquest and subjugation, it's not hard to feel the urgency of her fear.

Does being scared of specific other people, not because of anything they've done or threatened to do but because of a label you've applied to them along with the ingredients you believe that label contains, make you a racist or a bigot? Or does it just make you a sad, self-alienated outlier in our multicultural society?

This isn't just a question of semantics. Calling Hanson racist guarantees one outcome only: that she will be reinforced ever further in her beliefs. Given that she already sees the world as a place of unending threat, and believes that the whole establishment is ranged against her, how do we expect her to react when we tell her she's a racist idiot and an embarrassment to her country? With gratitude? With remorse?

Hanson has spent the past 18 years trying to get back into Parliament. There's no good reason to suppose that she's been doing it just for the electoral funding. The more logical conclusion is that she believes her voice is needed, because she has something urgent and meaningful to say. Each time she speaks, that conviction is far more apparent than any suspected ulterior motivation. She is absolutely making trouble, but she really doesn't seem to see herself as a trouble maker. The predictable reaction she provokes, of outrage and condemnation, is in her mind obviously misguided and further evidence that she's right.

Hanson is in fact that rare thing: a conviction politician. Shameless populist, yes; skilful manipulator of the media and gullible voters, yes. But there are two types of populists: the cynical opportunists of the Trump or Palmer variety; and the true believers. This class of politician reeks of authenticity - Jacqui Lambie is an exemplar. She genuinely believes what she says when she says it, even the stuff that makes literally no sense whatsoever and even if she won't believe it later. Hanson is the same.

I've read that Hanson is actually quite a nice person if you meet her. I have no idea whether that's true. I also don't know whether she's as stupid as she sometimes comes across. I do know that I abhor most of what she says. I also think she has the right to say it, provided it falls short of inciting hatred or violence towards others. And, like it or not, we have to respect the fact that a substantial number of Australians feel sufficiently angry, alienated and/or disgusted to want to have her speaking for them on the national stage.

So, what do we do with a problem child like Pauline? I'm not saying we should empathise with her. Empathy requires comprehension of another's inner mind; I don't recommend digging too deeply into the Hanson brain. Nor should we back off from holding her to public account for the harm she does. We can however achieve that purpose without lapsing into the same behaviours of which we accuse her: name calling and provocation.

Distasteful as the prospect is for the other members of Parliament, they are obliged by their duty to us to engage sensibly with Hanson. They don't seem to find it too hard to do that with George Christensen or Cory Bernardi, and I really struggle to see what makes those gentlemen more worthy of anyone's respect than Hanson.

As for the media: continue to treat Hanson as a circus freak if you wish, for our mock horror and cheap titillation (ooh you'll never guess what awful thing she said today!), but you are doing no service to anyone. She will not be ignored; she is, for now, significant. When her words are hateful and harmful, call them so. Point out her hypocrisies. Explain why she is wrong.

Bigotry isn't funny; Pauline Hanson isn't a joke.

Michael Bradley is the managing partner of Sydney law firm Marque Lawyers, and he writes a weekly column for The Drum. He tweets at @marquelawyers.

This is my last post for The Drum. It's been great fun and I have more admiration for Chip Rolley and his team than I can adequately express.