One Nation is no stranger to the headlines, but it’s been a long time since the party has been talked about as a serious political force. Operating on the fringes of Australian political life for years, suddenly Pauline Hanson is in the news every day.

A significant part of this is the party’s well-documented meteoric rise in the polls. It’s prompted speculation about One Nation becoming Australia’s official opposition party, leaving the Liberals and Nationals in the dust.

But while politics is a fast-moving beast, you only need to look back a couple of years to be reminded of the long history of dysfunction that’s plagued the party.

So will this ascendancy amount to a lasting realignment of conservative politics in Australia? Can One Nation overcome its scandal-ridden past to emerge as the dominant force in Australian right-wing politics?

The 1998 Queensland state election remains One Nation’s electoral high point. It was the only time the party polled above 20%. The election saw the party pick up 11 of 89 seats, propelling it to the third largest party in the state parliament.

But One Nation’s stunning rise was over almost as soon as it started. The party was beset with internal disunity, political scandals and poor management. Most of the party’s Queensland parliamentarians abandoned it after demands to democratise the party organisation were ignored.

Hanson lost her seat in parliament soon after, narrowly failing to win the newly-formed Queensland seat of Blair at the 1998 federal election.

One Nation managed to gain the upper house balance of power in the 2001 Western Australian state election. However, Hanson’s resignation from the party in 2002 and conviction for electoral fraud in 2003 (later overturned) helped plunge the party into political irrelevance.

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