Young Tasmanians have gathered outside Parliament House to protest against Pauline Hanson and One Nation, as part of what organisers described as a national day of student action against the party.
Chants of “migrants are welcome, racists are not” and “people are power” carried across Hobart’s Parliament Lawns as a series of young speakers took the microphone, in front of a crowd of about 200 people.
Many in the crowd were school-age students. The Hobart rally followed an earlier national student walkout in August.
One Nation, which recently registered as a political party in Tasmania, has climbed in the polls this year, reaching 21% in state voting intention in the latest quarterly EMRS poll.
Several speakers called for the voting age to be lowered, arguing many of those at the rally could not yet vote on the issues that affected them.
A speaker named Bradley told the crowd One Nation’s push to pull Australia out of the United Nations Refugee Convention would “cause the deaths of thousands of innocent people escaping oppressive regimes in war-torn countries”.
He said the move would show the world Australia was “willing to leave our obligations whenever it is most convenient for us”.
He drew a distinction between people who choose to migrate and those he said were forced to flee, telling the crowd a refugee was “not some random person who wants to move to Australia”.
Claire Davidson, who described herself as a farmer’s daughter, argued One Nation’s policies would hurt the rural communities it claimed to speak for.
“You cannot claim to speak for rural Australia while pushing a policy rural Australia is already feeling the pain of,” she said.
“That’s not standing up for us, that’s standing on us,” Davidson said of the party’s policies. She urged the crowd not to “let anger do the thinking for you”.
Another speaker, Lachie, told the crowd racist violence had happened in Australia before and could return.
He said anti-migrant language was “often implicitly violent”, pointing to talk of migration as an “invasion”.
He argued the strength of Australian multiculturalism was proof such events remained rare and said those who carried out past violence were “un-Australian”.
Other speakers framed the rally as a stand against racism, homophobia, transphobia and misogyny.
“Pauline Hanson’s rhetoric has turned ordinary Australians into hateful extremists brainwashed by her material,” one speaker said.
They rejected online claims that protesters had been paid to attend.
Kate Essex urged the crowd to stay involved in politics beyond the rally.
She said “protest is what built this country” and encouraged young people to run for office and vote on policy rather than party loyalty.
One Nation State President Lee Hanson said the rally was “deeply concerning on many, many levels” and that she believed some of the chants were “inciting harm”.
She said the students had been “misled as to what they think One Nation and the party stands for”, arguing the party’s position was the opposite of what was described at the rally.
“It demonstrates that our kids are being indoctrinated through school and they’re being groomed, pure and simple, by political organisations that I believe are associated with the rally event today,” she said.
Hanson said the protest would not deter the party and had instead highlighted what it was campaigning on.
“It’ll only strengthen our cause. It’ll only strengthen the support for One Nation,” she said.
