{"id":853779,"date":"2026-08-13T12:50:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T12:50:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/853779\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T12:50:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T12:50:10","slug":"melancholic-fantasy-wong-escalates-labor-rhetoric-against-hanson-condemning-monoculture-comment-penny-wong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/853779\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Melancholic fantasy\u2019: Wong escalates Labor rhetoric against Hanson, condemning \u2018monoculture\u2019 comment | Penny Wong"},"content":{"rendered":"

Labor has escalated its pushback on One Nation\u2019s surging political support, with the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, labelling Pauline Hanson\u2019s push for a monoculture a \u201cmelancholic fantasy\u201d that would harm national security.<\/p>\n

Wong, the first Asian-Australian to serve in federal cabinet, will use a major address at The Lowy Institute on Friday to criticise politicians stoking racial divisions, insisting the country\u2019s multicultural success remains a national asset.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe call for a monoculture is a call for Australia to curtail our choices and cut off our connections,\u201d Wong will say, according to a preview of the speech.<\/p>\n

\"PaulinePauline Hanson says Australia must be \u2018monocultural\u2019 in Press Club address \u2013 video<\/p>\n

\u201cTo look inwards, to have no friends to work with, no partners to trade with, no opportunities to grow from. To be lonely in a dangerous world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up for the Breaking News Australia email<\/a><\/p>\n

Hanson said in June that Australia must exist as a \u201cmonocultural society<\/a>\u201d, blaming high levels of overseas migration for a loss of national identity and values. In a speech criticised across the political spectrum, the One Nation leader conceded modern Australia was multiracial, adding that only one \u201ccultural umbrella\u201d should exist.<\/p>\n

In one of the strongest rebuttals yet from Labor, Wong argues Hanson risks damaging the national interest and badly undermining social cohesion.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut well before we could ever realise this melancholic fantasy of monoculture, there is a lot of damage that can be done,\u201d she will say.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecause Australians would be turned against each other. Australia would be a more hostile place. Harder to be family, harder to be a friend, colleague or neighbour.\u201d<\/p>\n

Warning forces within the country and overseas are seeking to divide Australians, Wong warns against politicians seeking to pit different sections of the community against others.<\/p>\n

\u201cTurning Australians against each other is the opposite of patriotism. Our resilience starts with how we choose to live together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wong\u2019s intervention comes as record support for One Nation reshapes the political landscape<\/a>. In last month\u2019s Guardian Essential poll the party attracted 25% of the primary vote, behind Labor on 31% but ahead of the Coalition\u2019s 22%.<\/p>\n

Her address \u2013 in an annual lecture named for diplomat and intelligence boss Allan Gyngell \u2013 includes a re-ordering of Australia\u2019s foreign policy priorities to put the Indo-Pacific region first.<\/p>\n

In response to a speech by Canada\u2019s prime minister, Mark Carney, in January, in which he lamented the decline of the post second world war, rules-based order and called for middle powers to act together more strategically, Wong says Australia has been at work on the task since Labor\u2019s 2022 election victory.<\/p>\n

She points to multilateral organisations including the Pacific Islands Forum and enhanced cooperation with the European Union, as well as closer cooperation with Quad partners as evidence.<\/p>\n

But Wong says resilience should be a key focus for the Albanese government.<\/p>\n

\u201cNations face weaponised supply chains, flagrant disinformation, and foreign interference that seeks to weaken us from within, as well as the challenges posed by artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cAI alone is an era-defining technology \u2013 reshaping economies, societies and national power \u2013 with benefits and risks in every domain. It is connecting the globe, and dividing it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt will spread faster and disrupt more than any revolutionary technology before it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Labor has escalated its pushback on One Nation\u2019s surging political support, with the foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":853780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-853779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853779","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=853779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/853780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}