Ashlynne McGhee

It's pretty funny when you look at it, actually.

It's like a blast from the past.

They were one of the first on Facebook.

They were one of the first on Instagram.

They've got some of the biggest followings on YouTube and TikTok.

They know how to talk to people directly and they don't need us anymore.

It's a really interesting question, how her gender influences her politics.

I think it's actually helped and hindered her as well.

I think in the first way, if we think about it, she was underestimated in those early days and dismissed and ridiculed and not taken very seriously.

I don't think we would have treated a male politician like that, quite frankly.

I think she would have been taken far more seriously and perhaps as a more genuine threat given the kind of rhetoric she was using.

But because she was ridiculed and dismissed and belittled, people flocked to her as sort of the anti-hero.

So that was actually the start of her popularity.

The more she was ridiculed, the more people moved towards her.

And I think that her gender was a big part of that.

Now, the second part of it is that she hasn't had to climb a traditional male hierarchy within a party.

So if you think about the woeful lack of female leaders in Australian politics, it's because a lot of the establishment parties are full of blokes and women can't get to the top.

Now, Pauline Hanson co-founded her party.

She just didn't have to navigate that mess, right?

And if you look at overseas examples like Georgia Maloney, she founded her party and even Marine Le Pen, like her father founded the party.