Senator Pauline Hanson believed the WA election would make her One Nation party a legitimate third force in Australian politics.

Senator Hanson had identified the WA election as the contest which would demonstrate her One Nation was a legitimate third party which had to be respected.

Voters strongly disagreed.

Rather than forcing it’s way into the power club, One Nation lost support as the campaign went on, and that decline accelerated during the final week when Senator Hanson arrived, apparently believing she could clinch the party’ triumph.

The One Nation vote dove from around 13 per cent in an opinion poll to just under five per cent in the election itself.

Pauline Hanson flanked by her One Nation party’s state leader Colin Tincknell, with his wife Sandra, after he learnt he won an upper house seat in the South West region in the WA election. Picture: Rebecca Le May/AAPSource:AAP

It might get two and possibly three seats in the state Upper House, but fewer than the Greens and the National, and a long way from the balance of power position originally promised.

On cue, Pauline Hanson has blamed others — she barred a news organisation from a press conference in a Trump-like snit — but can’t dismiss her own contribution.

Comments by Senator Hanson — particularly her rubbish on childhood vaccinations, which alarmed the public in Australia’s youngest state — landed with a thud, and sent a message of incompetence and policy shallowness.

She also has, correctly, attacked the preference swap deal with the Liberal, a disaster for both parties.

Senator Hanson’ crew was asking supporters to give their second choices to a government which was despised by many of those supporters.

It wasn’t jut a deal with one of those elitist mainstream parties, it was a deal with a particularly unloved elitist mainstream party.

West Australian Premier Colin Barnett makes his concession speech at the Liberal Party election night function Picture: Richard Wainwright/AAPSource:AAP

This preference experiment was the first in 16 years in which Liberal didn’t put One Nation last, and the consequences will influence strategies at the Queensland election later this year, and the federal election scheduled for 2019.

Further, the big claims being made about One Nation will be re-examined, because the Hanson campaign in the west was at best less successful than planned, at worst a humiliating flop.

Watching a government expire after close to a decade in office is almost refreshing in an era of disposable premiers and PMs, and there is no doubt the Colin Barnett government was tired and suffering policy malnutrition.

Premier-elect, West Australian Labor leader Mark McGowan, his wife Sarah and children Samuel, Amelia and Alexander at the party's election night event in Perth Picture: Dan Peled/AAPSource:AAP

Over his eight years as premier Mr Barnett had struggled through the global financial crisis, the rush of the mining boom and the disruption it caused, followed by the disappearance of that boom.

There were substantial state issues in play in Saturday’s election and clear policy demarcation points between the Liberals and the triumphant Labor Party.

A big one was Labor’ rejection of partial privatisation of the electricity network.

Another was state debt, already costing $1 billion a year to service.

Federal Labor will argue there were national issues which also influenced voters — penalty rates, and the leadership of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

The claim is questionable, but that won’t top Opposition Leader Bill Shorten using the WA result as a platform from which he an address the broad federal constituency in the east.

But WA voter were responding to local matters which had been well argued by new premier Mark MGowan in a well-run Labor a pain.

Nobody could say the One Nation campaign was well run and the election underlined that the party was run by keen amateurs who often don’t like one-another, have policy ideas which are plain loopy, and who know little or nothing about election.

The party needs the attention of political professionals, and stable candidates whose personal beliefs are more Earth-bound than those some standing under the party banner.

And it will have to make tough evaluations of the role of Pauline Hanson herself.