Pauline Hanson has declared immigration has driven Australia into a \u201cstate of crisis\u201d and called for a \u201cmonocultural society\u201d as she vowed One Nation would fight for people to get their country back.<\/p>\n
In her wide-ranging inaugural speech at the National Press Club \u2013 briefly interrupted by a Banksy-style protest stunt orchestrated by GetUp \u2013 the One Nation leader said that people had been trying for years to silence her.<\/p>\n
She argued that hate preachers should be deported, defended her plan to scrap financial support for Indigenous Australians, and pledged to tackle the \u201ctransgender insurgency\u201d, dump renewables, and back the construction of one nuclear power plant on the east coast.<\/p>\n
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By continuing you agree to our Terms<\/a> and Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Senator Hanson said immigration \u201chas our country in the state of crisis\u201d after the post-COVID surge of arrivals that hasn\u2019t been offset by people leaving, and declared multiculturalism an \u201cutterly flawed policy\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cWe cannot be a multicultural society. We are a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n She questioned whether the \u201cAustralian electorate\u201d supported the fact that 51 per cent of people living here were either born overseas or had migrant parents, contrasting it with the US where she said the figure was 14 per cent. Pew Research Centre data shows approximately 30 per cent of the US population are either first- or second-generation migrants.<\/p>\n Senator Hanson took particular aim at hate preachers, saying they were a \u201csocial cancer\u201d who should be deported or hit with the full force of the law, and said her gravest concern was radial Islam.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve seen too much footage on our TVs from what\u2019s happened in Britain, Canada, France, Germany \u2013 they\u2019re all just absolute s-holes \u2026 and I don\u2019t want Australia to become like that,\u201d she said when asked whether she believed Australia was \u201cin danger of being swamped by Muslim migration\u201d, an echo of her first speech in 1996 that pushed back on Asian migration.<\/p>\n The call for Australia to be a monoculture received the most pushback from Senator Hanson\u2019s political opponents, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese who said on social media after her speech that diversity was a strength of modern Australia.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are a great country here in Australia. We are the best country on Earth,\u201d he told reporters earlier when asked if he viewed One Nation as a threat.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the reasons why we are the best country on Earth is not just the natural environment that we have, it\u2019s the people, people who\u2019ve come here, the workers here, these young kids in there from a variety of backgrounds who enrich our nation with their presence.\u201d<\/p>\n Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi, who has previously sued Senator Hanson for racial discrimination, decried the speech as \u201cthe same tired, hate-filled message\u201d the One Nation leader had sold for years.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s clear the Australia of One Nation\u2019s fantasies is a mean and selfish place where punching down on migrants and Muslims becomes the norm, where women\u2019s right to choose are wound back, and where we fight each other for scraps dropped from above by the billionaires pulling the strings,\u201d Senator Farqui said in a statement.<\/p>\n Scrap Indigenous supports<\/p>\n Among the cuts Senator Hanson outlined in response to a question about fighting inflation was a plan to abolish \u201cthe Aboriginal department\u201d.<\/p>\n She later elaborated, saying that all State and Federal funding for Indigenous-specific programs should be scrapped because it lacked accountability.<\/p>\n \u201cMy vision for Australia is that we\u2019re all Australians regardless of race, colour, creed, where you are. We\u2019re all treated as Australians equally on an individual needs basis, not based on race,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n One Nation senators routinely turn their backs on the acknowledgement of Country made at the start of each Senate sitting.<\/p>\n Senator Hanson on Wednesday started her speech by telling people not to expect \u201ca divisive Welcome to Country\u201d from her.<\/p>\n More than $4.5 million in donations has flowed to One Nation over the past week since Senator Hanson launched a \u201cfire the liar\u201d campaign taking aim at Mr Albanese.<\/p>\n The minor party\u2019s leader doubled down on the accusations on Wednesday, calling the Prime Minister and his government liars nine times.<\/p>\n \u201cAlbanese lied to become elected, and Australians are paying for it,\u201d she said while speaking about the cost of living.<\/p>\n Later, touching on housing and the changes to capital gains tax discounts and negative gearing \u2013 which she opposes \u2013 she said that young people were \u201cthe latest victims of the Government\u2019s lies\u201d.<\/p>\n She also spoke forcefully about free speech, saying that too many people were frightened of what would happen if they spoke up on the issues she talks about.<\/p>\n \u201cThey feel demonised and condescended. And they\u2019re mad as hell about it. It\u2019s as good an explanation as any for the earthquake that is changing the political landscape in Australia and other countries,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n One Nation has a policy to enshrine free speech protections in the constitution, which would require a referendum.<\/p>\n However, when asked whether this would stop the gag orders she places on One Nation party members from speaking to media, she said that those were necessary for her to retain control of her party.<\/p>\n She said when she first formed One Nation, \u201cI had nothing but trouble, putting out bushfires, people who thought they were in these executive positions and thought they were running the party\u201d.<\/p>\n It has re-established a branch structure over the past year and Senator Hanson said a lot of enthusiastic people had come on board again.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve restricted these people until we know who they are, are they right people in these positions,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause I know the majority of you are going to go out there and try and hound or criticise me or anyone who\u2019s associated with this party or is a member… I know what you\u2019re up to, and that\u2019s why I have to be in total control of it.\u201d<\/p>\n The party has also stepped up its vetting regime, which Senator Hanson described as an \u201cinternational vetting process\u201d to examine potential staff and candidate Facebook pages and past statements.<\/p>\n However, she didn\u2019t detail what her red lines were for rejecting people.<\/p>\n Reporting over the past two months has revealed One Nation had a convicted rapist on its staff, who has now been sacked, and several cases of officials making racist and anti-Semitic comments online.<\/p>\n Senator Hanson also used a significant portion of her speech to attack what she described as the \u201ctransgender insurgency\u201d that \u201cmust be dismantled\u201d.<\/p>\n If One Nation won government, Senator Hanson would sack Sex Discrimination Commissioner Anna Cody and the head of the Australian Human Rights Commission Hugh de Kretser and stop public agencies signing up to the Australian Workplace Equity Index.<\/p>\n It would also hold a national discussion about when abortions should be allowed.<\/p>\n Senator Hanson said there were too many abortions in Australia and that she personally thought 20 weeks was too late to terminate a pregnancy.<\/p>\n She also declared that \u201cchildcare is completely out of control\u201d when it costs taxpayers $16 billion a year in subsidies.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I see that sort of money being put into childcare, I think we need to have a complete investigation into it, where the money\u2019s going,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Bringing down energy policies was central to Senator Hanson\u2019s pitch on cost of living as she declared \u201cthe hoax of global warming\u201d the one policy that had led to climbing numbers of Australians experiencing hardship.<\/p>\n One Nation would scrap the climate change department and all subsidies for renewable energy.<\/p>\n Solar panels would be allowed on rooftops, but there wouldn\u2019t be any more large-scale renewables projects under her plans, which included building new coal-fired power plants in South Australia and Queensland, and a nuclear power plant somewhere on the east coast.<\/p>\n The latter would likely be publicly funded unless private investment could be found.<\/p>\n Senator Hanson said the Coalition\u2019s policy at last year\u2019s election for seven nuclear plants had been a mistake.<\/p>\n Also on the chopping block were national broadcasters SBS \u2013 to be scrapped completely \u2013 and the ABC, which would be wound back to regional-only and a subscription streaming service under One Nation.<\/p>\n Senator Hanson had a couple of fiery exchanges with journalists during the question session, which extended beyond the usual end time because her speech ran for twice as long as the standard format.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t answer to the media. I answer to the Australian people,\u201d she said during the address.<\/p>\n She subsequently told Guardian reporter Sarah Martin, who has written many stories scrutinising One Nation, that she was \u201csuch a trashy journalist\u201d who would be banned from getting any answers in the future.<\/p>\n And asked by senior SBS correspondent Anna Henderson about the broadcaster\u2019s role in reporting on Australian news, Senator Hanson told her bluntly that she was going to be jobless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pauline Hanson has declared immigration has driven Australia into a \u201cstate of crisis\u201d and called for a \u201cmonocultural…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":742146,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44,84],"class_list":["post-742145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=742145"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/742145\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/742146"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=742145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=742145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=742145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}