In 1997, when I was presenting the Country Hour on the ABC, I was sitting in an outside broadcast van at an agricultural field day in Northern Victoria about to interview the then member for Farrer and deputy prime minister, Tim Fischer, and the deputy opposition leader, Gareth Evans.

Pauline Hanson had just been elected to the House of Representatives and had subsequently launched One Nation. The two major-party veterans knew this was a threat.

Off-air, they put their heads together in quiet agreement to resist One Nation’s populist tenets – anti-multiculturalism, economic nationalism and protectionism – an early Australian version of Trump’s America First posturing.

It was a rare insight into bipartisan reason, where two powerful men put principle over politics.

How things have changed.

Almost 30 years later, the highly respected Tim Fischer is sadly no longer with us. And the Coalition, in its death throes, is now validating the divisive, xenophobic, ascendant One Nation by preferencing them in his former seat.

This move may well deliver One Nation its first election win in the lower house in the federal parliament. In doing so, the Coalition may be putting the final nail in its........

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