Pauline Hanson delivered her first speech to the National Press Club today. Photo / Getty Images
The One Nation leader today gave her first address to the forum, where she gave an often controversial speech, including declaring Australia “cannot be a multicultural society”.
Advocacy group GetUp has claimed responsibility for a stunt in which a protest poster was displayed behind Senator Hanson as she delivered her address.
In a statement, GetUp chief executive Paul Ferris said the stunt aimed to highlight Hanson’s voting record.
“Pauline Hanson has built her entire brand on being for the battlers. But her record tells a different story,” he said.
“One Nation has consistently opposed wage rises, affordable childcare, increases to the aged pension, and housing affordability measures.
Hansen proceeded to speak emotionally, on the verge of tears, of the plight of low-income Australians, including those who had sent their children to school hungry. But she later took aim at journalists.
“It’s your job to scrutinise my party, its people and its policies,” she told an audience made up largely of members of the federal Parliament press gallery.
“Unlike the Prime Minister, I welcome it. I’m an elected representative and I should be scrutinised,” she said.
“That doesn’t give you the licence to pile on. It doesn’t give you the licence to delegitimise my party.”
She said the media had no right “to repeat the lie that we are a racist party – because that is untrue”.
“The Australian people can make up their own mind. And they are,” she said.
She accused the ABC of having an “obvious” bias against One Nation.
Early in the delivery of the speech, a poster stating Hanson “opposed a pay rise for workers … while I took a A$100,000 ($121,000) pay rise for myself” appeared on the rear screen during her address, with the One Nation leader forced to briefly pause as staff removed the prop.
More than 30 protesters had demonstrated outside National Press Club in Canberra as Hanson arrived for the address.
Monitored by at least 10 police officers, the group had accused the Queensland senator of “using ordinary people as cover for her vile racism”.
“When she first declared that Australia was in danger of being swamped by Asians, she was a racist,” one speaker said.
“She was a racist when she warned that Muslim women are national security threat.
“She is this country’s most prominent, most serious, most popular racist, and that is why we have to fight against Hanson.”
Hanson has lashed out at a journalist who asked whether the One Nation leader used nepotism to secure her daughter Lee a taxpayer-funded job as a senior adviser to a NSW One Nation politician.
Sarah Martin, a journalist for the Guardian, asked if the Queensland politician had any role in “appointing” Lee to the office of NSW parliamentarian Sean Bell.
“Honestly, you never give up. I’ve never seen a person that’s such a trashy journalist, you know, and what you put out all the time,” Hanson said.
She told Martin not to “come near” her for an interview in the future, accusing her of “constantly bashing One Nation”.
Hanson denied getting her daughter the job, claiming it was “on her own merits by someone who actually wanted to employ her”.
Hanson described transgender Australians as an “insurgency” and pledged to sack officials in support of what she described as “transgender ideology”.
She singled out Sex Discrimination Commissioner Dr Anna Cody and Human Rights Commission president Hugh de Kretser, whom she said she would “sack” over their views on transgender issues.
But she said she wasn’t “opposed” to transgender people.
“I am simply saying that a transgender woman should not be allowed into woman’s sport or into a woman’s changing room. And likewise, a transgender man,” she said.
The hotly contested Farrer byelection, in which One Nation clinched the formerly blue-ribbon seat, was a “watershed moment” for the populist party, Hanson said.
“We had breached that final barrier – a One Nation candidate with strong credentials in David Farley, won us a seat in the House of Representatives for the first time,” she said.
“And not just any seat, but a seat previously held by former representatives of the Liberals and the Nationals.”
Hanson doubled down on her accusation the Government was “not telling the truth” on its controversial tax reforms – touted to tackle intergenerational inequity in the housing market – and accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Treasurer Jim Chalmers of misleading young Australians.
“[By] punishing ambitious and aspirational young people who are trying to build a future, to build wealth, to build independence and to invest in Australia, Albanese and Chalmers are heading in the wrong direction,” she said.
Hanson was adamant she wasn’t afraid of causing offence with her actions or words, saying every attempt had “been made for years to silence me”.
Speaking to a packed-out crowd, including her chief of staff James Ashby, as well as colleagues Barnaby Joyce, Malcolm Roberts, Sean Bell and Tyrone Whitten, Hanson declared Australia “cannot be a multicultural society”.
“We are a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural. Australians must live under the one cultural umbrella,” she said.
She described multiculturalism as a “failed policy” and said: “Surely opposing that is not racist, it’s common sense.”
Among the protesters outside, one speaker branded Hanson “the most dangerous politician in Australia as she drives a racist far-right body into the mainstream”.
Speakers also criticised the right-wing politician’s opposition to abortion rights and to clean energy policies.
Protesters said One Nation harboured “homophobes and white supremacists” and proceeded to chant “Pauline Hanson go to hell”.