Look, I want want to be mean but I can't find any other way to say this: Pauline Hanson is not fit to run the country. Not if her address to the National Press Club yesterday is any indication.

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Rambling, incoherent, laced with vindictiveness, defensive, evasive and heavy on grievance, her lengthy speech made it difficult to imagine her as an opposition leader, let alone a prime minister. Delivered with trademark choking quiver, it was more an epic whine than a national address. An hour of grating anger.

Anger at Islam, at the media, the "transgender insurgency", the United Nations, foreign aid, migrants who don't speak English at home (never mind Hanson struggled with the language during her speech), the public service (in particular the "Aborigine department", industrial relations, net zero. It went on and on and on some more.

In fact, it went on so long, the journos watching were starting to twitch. They weren't here for the entirely predictable stump speech, rather the opportunity to ask some hard questions. As Hanson rambled, they could sense the time for questions running out like sands through the hourglass.

But a few did get the chance to quiz Hanson in her first National Press Club appearance after three decades in politics. It wasn't pretty.

They wanted to know what One Nation's tax policy was, whether it had evolved since an earlier proposal for a 25 per cent flat tax. "I'm not going to give you where my head's at at the moment for tax policy," she said, avoiding the question.

They questioned her record of opposition to minimum wage rises, workers' rights, wage theft criminalisation, regulation of the gig economy and industrial relations. "Businesses also tell me you can't sack people these days. They're on their phones, they don't work, they don't turn up, they actually are lazy, and businesses are tired of it. They've had enough."

Sarah Martin from The Guardian wanted to know if Hanson had played a role in appointing her daughter Lee to a lucrative, taxpayer funded role as One Nation adviser. The One Nation leader went full Trump, accusing Martin of trashy journalism and having an obsession with her. Martin's dogged reporting has unearthed serious issues in One........

© Canberra Times