But what happened after One Nation won all those seats all those years ago set the tone for everything that would follow. Within a year, One Nation was deregistered as a party, its MPs split acrimoniously - one resigned from parliament, some became independents, some established the so-called City Country Alliance - and the great shining moment dissolved into tears before bedtime.

Since then - and we’ll skate over the years of unpleasantness involving fraud charges, Hanson’s jail time and redemption, the expulsion of her one-time very good friend and colleague David Oldfield - there has only been one federal electoral success of note.

After 13 years in the outer wilderness, Hanson was once again elected by the membership as leader of One Nation in 2014, and began reorganising.

In 2016, she took the grandly titled Pauline Hanson’s One Nation to the election and won four Senate seats, including her own.

The others were Rod Culleton (WA), Malcolm Roberts (Qld), and Brian Burston (NSW). It looked to be a triumph.

Things haven’t gone so well since.

Culleton was stripped of his seat in January 2017 after he was declared bankrupt. For good measure, despite all his theatrical protests, the High Court ruled that his election had been invalid anyway because of a criminal conviction for stealing the keys to a tow truck. Hanson declared the Culleton’s departure was good riddance.

Culleton was replaced by One Nation’s second candidate on the WA list, Peter Georgiou.

The unusual Malcolm Roberts, who declared he was 1000 per cent certain he wasn’t a dual certain, turned out to hold British citizenship and was given the heave ho by the High Court late last year.

Roberts's replacement, Fraser Anning, having escaped an ineligibility ruling himself when a bankruptcy action against him was withdrawn, barely made it to the Senate before falling out with Hanson. She issued a statement saying he had "abandoned" One Nation, and Anning responded by accusing Hanson of making his position "pretty much untenable". He's now an independent.

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And that left Brian Burston as Hanson’s only original Senate colleague.

When Burston broke ranks with Hanson this week and declared he - unlike her - would honour One Nation’s agreement with the Turnbull government and support proposed corporate tax cuts, Hanson went for his throat.

He’d stabbed her in the back, she ranted on TV, adding he’d secretly been trying to join the Shooters Party, which he denied.

"The people of this country don't even know who the hell Brian Burston is," she hissed, which surely says something about her recruiting abilities.

And then it was tears, and a soliloquy about how she’s been standing up for the people of Australia because other politicians do nothing.

Such drama.

The precipice and its darkness beckon. Again.