While Pauline Hanson was expelled from the Liberal Party in 1996 for her public attacks on Aboriginal people, there is little doubt that she would be readily at home in the modern day Liberal National Party.

Queensland LNP MP George Christensen speaks at rallies organised by racist white power groups with impunity. Senior South Australian Liberal Cory Bernardi gained the support of the Senate for an inquiry aimed at inflaming the nonsensical hysteria regarding halal foods. Peter Dutton, now described by some as the senior Conservative in the LNP, used his position as Immigration Minister to attack all refugees for both stealing jobs and bludging on welfare. Worse, such stridently and determinedly divisive rhetoric is now being seen as defining modern-day conservatism.

Of course there is nothing new in Australian politicians seeking to use racism, attacking minorities and inflaming divisiveness for political advantage. Sometimes our country has been fortunate to have strong enough political and community leaders to speak out and emphasise the fact that we are better together – most notably when Malcolm Fraser showed that large numbers of Vietnamese refugees could be effectively resettled in Australia and provide great long-term benefit to the country. At other times, our leaders – and our own courage and unity as a society and a nation - have failed us.

The efforts of wartime leader Billy Hughes – some would say our worst Prime Minister ever in terms of the social and economic harm he caused – in not just promoting existing anti-Asian rhetoric but deliberately inflaming divisiveness between Catholics and Protestants would take a generation to repair. And after all, our nation was founded on the White Australia Policy. But as writer George Megalogenis has effectively shown, the times when the divisiveness and fear based on race or religion have taken hold in Australia have also been the periods when economic downturn and social inequality have become more entrenched.