On the day this week that we learnt Australia’s population had grown faster than at any time since 1952, when Bob Menzies was prime minister and the British were setting off their first nuclear test in Australian territory, Pauline Hanson stood up in the Senate to claim vindication.

She recalled her first parliamentary speech. In 1996, she reminded the Senate, she had “warned we were in danger of being swamped by immigration from Asia”. That, too, was something of a bombshell in Australian history.

Illustration by Jim Pavlidis.Credit:

Since that moment 28 years ago, Hanson has sought to foment racial and religious division against Muslims, Indigenous Australians, Asians … any minority would do.

Although she’s been a near-continuous presence in Australian politics, she has remained on its fringe, the angry ghost of Australia’s racist past, summoning the spiteful spirits of its ugliest impulses.

It’s been to Australia’s credit that she has failed. It’s the proud boast of a succession of prime ministers now that Australia is the most successful multicultural nation on earth.

It’s true that social harmony has been put under new pressure over the past few months. The barbaric Hamas attack on Israel and Benjamin Netanyahu’s savage retaliation against Gaza has inflamed sentiment in Australia.

But this has not shaken the foundations of Australian society. The anger and hate, which has zero effect in Gaza, can only damage Australian society. Fortunately, it’s likely to fade with the conflict itself, episodic rather than structural.

But this week’s immigration statistics gave Hanson fresh material. The Australian Bureau of Statistics said that the overall Australian population grew by 2.5 per cent in the year to September 30. That compares with the annual average since federation of 1.6 per cent.

In numbers of people, the increase was 659,800 in the year, equivalent to adding another Canberra plus another Cairns in just 12 months. That’s adding an average of about 100 extra people per hour, every hour, all year.