As a One Nation-supporting, Sri Lanka-born migration adviser, Lalin De Silva is alive to the irony. He mentions it immediately.

“It’s very ironic that I’m a registered migration agent who is supporting Pauline Hanson against mass immigration. Plus, my best friend happens to be a Muslim,” says the 65-year-old lawyer, enjoying a late afternoon coffee. In the fading light, the main street is virtually empty, while the Pakenham Marketplace shopping centre is still going strong.

De Silva continues: “Third irony: I am a Buddhist.”

Lalin De Silva is volunteering for One Nation. Joe Armao

We’re in Pakenham, the lower house seat on Melbourne’s eastern fringe where One Nation’s Victorian leader Warren Pickering is hoping to make history as the right-wing populist party’s first Victorian lower house MP.

Back in the late 1990s, the first wave of momentum for Hanson’s party was met with protests in Victoria and defeat for the party electorally in Australia’s most progressive state.…