When Michael Kapel and I spoke to the Prime Minister in April (as reported in the Review, 1-24 May), we asked him how he defined Hansonism. Despite questioning whether there was such a thing - "she’s got no philosophy or anything" - the Prime Minister did venture that he thought of "European analogies ... a touch of Le Pen... a touch of Poujade".

Our question was not an idle one. With serious talk of One Nation winning state seats in Queensland and possibly Senate places in Queensland and WA, both the Coalition and the Labor Party should be spelling out quite clearly their understanding of Pauline Hanson and her politics.

From the Coalition, the signals are fragmented and contradictory. One the one hand are comments such as those just quoted, along with exposes of Ms Hanson’s far-right links by people like the Nationals’ Senator Ron Boswell.

On the other hand, there is an overwhelming body of evidence, as documented in these pages since Ms Hanson’s election, of favoritism bordering on outright collusion from certain sectors of Australia’s conservative parties.

The greatest single mistake that conservative politicians can make is to assume that One Nation is simply a few notches to the right of the Queensland National Party on a mainstream political continuum. It is not. Yet this appears to be a very common assumption, which perhaps explains why the Queensland Liberals can talk of giving One Nation preferences even though One Nation hasn’t even announced its policies.

Rob Borbidge says that he’d put any One Nation candidate before any ALP candidate in his seat. His Tourism Minister Bruce Davidson says that he’d put a Nazi before the ALP. Looking at some of One Nation’s hangers-on, that may very well be a decision he soon has to make. The PM begrudgingly admits to talkback radio host Mike Carlton that Pauline Hanson is a bigot, before qualifying his definition of "bigot" to include Kim Beazley, because he supports compulsory unionism on the waterfront. This is dangerous nonsense.

As for the Labor Party, the signals are also mixed. Despite Labor’s attempt to take the high moral ground on Hanson with its declaration that it will put One Nation candidates last, the Coalition parties have made much of the fact that Labor did a preference swap with the equally odious Australians Against Further Immigration in the Lindsay by-election in 1996. John Howard has already made reference to the Queensland ALP’s "softly-softly" approach to Native Title matters. And it was not too long ago that Kim Beazley and party secretary Gary Gray were bending over backwards to keep Graeme Campbell in the ALP, despite the efforts of Paul Keating to have the League of Rights’ pin-up boy thrown out. On the other hand, Labor is now firmly against any preference deal with racists.

It is obviously preferable that none of our mainstream parties give One Nation any electoral opportunities whatsoever. But it is also imperative that our leaders go on the record to explain what One Nation’s politics represent, if only so that we can hold them to it in a few years time if - God forbid - Hanson’s people ever get the balance of power anywhere.

Because if that happens, history tells us that some of those very same leaders will be doing their level best to bring the Hansonites into the mainstream, by co-opting more of their agenda. They may be doing it to haul back some votes. They may be doing it to legitimise their opportunism. But they’ll do it. The right’s Margaret Thatcher did it with the British National Front. And the left’s Lionel Jospin and Francois Mitterand did it with France’s Front National, not to mention British Labour leader Harold Wilson’s secret deals with anti-immigration MP Enoch Powell in the February 1974 General Election.

Pauline Hanson isn’t a fascist, nor is her party yet a fascist party. But One Nation’s links with Australia’s tiny racist and conspiratorial far-right are now so extensive that One Nation can and should be defined as proto-fascist. Some individuals with well-known track records in the farther shores of Australia’s hard-right, from Tony Pitt (Confederate Action Party) and Denis McCormack (League of Rights and Australians Against Further Immigration) to Brendan Gidley (National Republican Movement) and Don Veitch (ex-LaRouchite operative) have enjoyed disproportionate influence in the Hanson camp.

In our interview, the Prime Minister said: "Most of the people attracted to Pauline Hanson are not any more racist than you and I." Unfortunately, John Howard has it wrong. By and large they support Ms Hanson on the two issues that the Prime Minister himself describes as "wrong" and "offensive" - that Aborigines are overindulged and that Australia is being swamped by Asians. This doesn’t make them "bad" or "un-Australian", but pretending they don’t factor race into their political worldview - in a negative way - is extremely naive.

John Howard appears to have a pathological fear of the word "racist", born not unsurprisingly of his own bitter experience back in 1988, when he was called a racist for questioning the pace of Asian immigration to Australia. It’s similar to his rejection of the word "multiculturalism" in favor of "harmony".

It is tempting to appeal to the PM to forget about the term "racist" if it causes him such heartache, and concentrate instead on responding to Pauline Hanson’s "wrong" and "offensive" ideas that have apparently delivered her a 20 per cent bloc of votes in some parts of Queensland. It is tempting, but now is not the time to indulge John Howard’s linguistic unease.

"She has obviously got some support (in Queensland) and we have to make certain that we have policies that appeal to them," the Prime Minister told the Review. "We will direct messages to her supporters, not her. But the people who are in line to support her, we’ll be pointing out to them that the sort of things that they want, we can deliver without the negatives that she will deliver, namely, the obvious concerns she’s aroused among Australians of Asian background..."

That’s fine if the all those people want are more jobs or better healthcare. But we all know what else they want. What messages will the Government be directing? Which of its policies are likely to appeal to One Nation voters? Is this how it intends to govern "for all of us"? Please explain, Mr Howard.