Fraser Anning, who attracted precisely 19 votes for his tilt at the Senate in 2016, has achieved vastly more than he ought to have any right to claim.

He’s caused no less than the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition to reach across the parliamentary divide and to shake hands in unconditional condemnation of his calls for a “final solution” on immigration and a return to White Australia.

Most extraordinarily, Anning has sparked a re-run of one of the more momentous motions to be put before the Australian Parliament in the past 30 years.

Back in 1988, after then opposition leader John Howard publicly propounded that too many Asians were being allowed to emigrate to Australia, prime minister Bob Hawke struck back with a three-part parliamentary repudiation.

His move acknowledged the dismantling of the White Australia Policy in the 1960s; recognised long-held bipartisan support for a racially non-discriminatory immigration policy, and declared that race or ethnic origin would never, explicitly or implicitly, determine Australia’s immigration intake.

Howard’s racialist dog-whistling was exposed and crushed, several Liberals crossed the floor against him and Hawke got Australia to move on.

On Tuesday, after Fraser Anning had delivered his “final solution” speech, Opposition Leader Bill Shorten saw fit to bring before the Parliament an exact replica of Hawke’s historic motion.

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It was - unsurprisingly, given the recent rise in odious sentiments concerning immigrants - supported overwhelmingly, though this time, it was a prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, who was put in the position of supporting an opposition leader.

Shorten himself acknowledged that his move might be questioned as too weighty a step in reaction to the likes of a Fraser Anning.

“I understand in one sense there might be a reason to simply ignore it, to starve the stupidity of oxygen, to treat it as beneath contempt,” said Shorten.

“But, as leaders and representatives of the Australian people, as servants of diverse communities in our great multicultural nation, we...cannot ignore the kind of prejudice and hate that the senator sought to unleash last night.”

Bob Hawke’s 1988 parliamentary motion, by comparison, was against a leader of the opposition, a position of significant standing in our democracy, and it was against John Howard, whose views carried weight, and who would go on to become Australia’s second-longest serving prime minister.

Fraser Anning, by any measure, is a political nobody.

He’s in the Senate only because of an accident.

The job fell into his hands thanks to the curious One Nation senator Malcolm Roberts running afoul of the citizenship requirements of the constitution.

Anning was third on One Nation’s ticket at the 2016 election, and despite almost no one voting for him - yes, it was 19 - he was the party’s next cab off the rank to replace Roberts.

Even then Anning only squeezed in when bankruptcy proceedings against him were withdrawn at the last minute.

He didn’t even make it to the Senate before he was politically stateless. Pauline Hanson wouldn’t vouch for him.

Soon, he was subsumed into an alliance of convenience with two other lonesome operators: Senator Cory Bernardi, Liberal deserter and now the Australian Conservatives’ only Senator, and Senator David Leyonhjelm, the single federal representative of the Liberal Democrats.

A couple of months ago, Anning washed up with Bob Katter’s Australian Party, becoming the outfit’s only senator.

"It's fantastic news,” Katter, the giggler in the big hat, crowed at the time, declaring he and Anning were “blood brothers”.

“We're tribal. Both our families were from Charters Towers before there was a Charters Towers."

It is a strange tribe, this one. Katter, who on Wednesday backed Anning “a 1000 per cent” - and thus, presumably, his views on immigration, race and White Australia - is of Lebanese heritage and his own father, Bob Katter snr, is remembered for removing a barrier separating whites and blacks at the picture theatre he ran in Cloncurry in the 1940s.

If Fraser Anning can be said to have achieved anything of worth at all, it is this: in a time when federal politics often inspires loathing, a Prime Minister and an Opposition Leader reached across the divide and shook hands, sealing a greater loathing of the repugnant sentiment that Australia’s racial make-up requires a “final solution”.