As much as I tried to resist, temptation got the better of me. Only briefly, mind you, because what I saw from the other side of the world seemed so absurd and petty, so infantile, investing more than a minute or two on it would have wasted precious time.

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Viewed from afar, the news from home was not only ridiculous, it revealed in one sitting how lucky we are - and how unfortunate.

Here, once again, a shrill, narrow-minded and poorly educated one-time fish and chip owner donned a burqa in the Senate and was suspended for her stunt, which she mistakenly assumed would never get old.

Good fortune that our democracy is open to all, from the humblest of backgrounds and despite a speaking voice that makes a bandsaw sound melodious. Misfortune that someone as unpleasant as Pauline Hanson can attract enough votes to get there and use her seat as a platform to sow division and bigotry.

Good fortune that so little of any real note or importance happens in our well-functioning polity that the recycled circus act of wearing a burqa garners headlines. Misfortune that the absence of much real political news at the tail end of the year means we're exposed to more Pauline Hanson than is healthy.

The ugliness didn't end at the burqa stunt. Hanson's courtship of the rubicund Barnaby Joyce also made for cringe-scrolling. The sandwich press steak and the giant container of Saxa salt on the table like an artifact from a suburban takeaway. The scrutiny and deep-as-spilled-drink analysis surrounding the most anticipated political date of the year was breathtaking in its silliness. The Saxa salt got more attention than the fact the former deputy PM and latter day planter box ornament was flirting with toxic One Nation politics.

Reading about this get-together from northern Japan, with North Korea just over the water in one direction and Putin's Russia in another, was surreal - like sneaking a glimpse into a distant, vaudeville sideshow from the........

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