Updated ,first published
Leading human rights and anti-discrimination voices have condemned Pauline Hanson’s inaugural National Press Club speech as dangerous, while One Nation MPs have been put under pressure to defend their party leader.
Australian Human Rights Commission president Hugh de Kretser on Thursday warned that Hanson’s rhetoric, which ranged from claiming Western civilisation was “under siege” to railing against a supposed “transgender insurgency”, would encourage discrimination against marginalised communities.
“That was a speech that really punched down on a lot of Australians,” said de Kretser, who Hanson singled out in her speech as needing sacking over his advocacy for trans rights.
“When we’re demonising parts of our community, that does create rising racism, that does create risks to safety,” the human rights boss told Radio National.
He said Hanson was calling for a return to the era of the White Australia policy, which would mean “some people belong here less than others, and some people are worth less than others, and that’s a concept that human rights absolutely rejects”.
Hanson used her first address to the Press Club to lay out her ambitions to reshape Australia after her party surged past Labor and the Coalition in the polls, and she was named preferred prime minister in the latest Resolve Political Monitor. She canvassed a slew of grievances but homed-in on migration as the greatest threat to the nation, in remarks that were also rejected across the political spectrum.
Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia, Aftab Malik, said Hanson was conflating extremists with the average Muslim, and accused her of fearmongering for political gain.
“We just need to listen to what Pauline Hanson has been saying for the last 30 years,” Malik told ABC radio. “She’s talked about Islam as a disease, she’s talked about surveillance of mosques.”
The special envoy said Australia was multi-ethnic and multi-faith, and that Hanson’s vision of a monoculture was “dystopian”.
“I think that either she wilfully remains ignorant or simply doesn’t grasp what she’s talking about.”
Net overseas migration has fallen slightly as the government argues it is effectively managing migrant intake while facing backlash from the Coalition and One Nation.
The latest figures, released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics on Thursday, showed net overseas migration had fallen from 311,000 in the year leading up to September 2025, to 301,000 in the year leading up to December 2025. Annual population growth fell by 0.1 per centage points.
Labor frontbencher Murray Watt said he lost track of the different groups that Hanson targeted in her speech, and that her plan for Australia was “one of division, chaos, and cuts”.
“She’s coming after workers, she’s coming after women, she’s coming after migrants, she’s coming after the ABC and SBS. But you can’t run a country just fuelled by your grievances against different groups in our community,” Watt said during an ABC TV appearance.
The prime minister said Australia’s public broadcasters played a crucial role in the nation’s democracy after Hanson vowed to abolish the SBS and make sweeping cuts to the ABC.
“I would hope that all media organisations come out and oppose that,” he told reporters in Sydney on Thursday.
“I’m not someone who goes to a media conference and says I won’t answer questions from some groups, I answer to all, and I’ll continue to do so.”
The Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance said Hanson’s banning of media outlets from press conferences was an assault on press freedom, and that the One Nation leader’s personal attack on Guardian journalist Sarah Martin violated the reporter’s right to a safe workplace free from abuse.
“Hanson’s actions stand in stark contrast with her remarks today that she welcomes the scrutiny of the media on her party, its people and its politics,” the journalists’ union said in a statement.
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the speech was filled with hate, and that Hanson’s vow to restrict abortion access and slash spending on childcare was “chilling”.
“One Nation is coming for women in this country. They don’t respect us. They don’t want us to have rights,” she told reporters in Canberra.
Opposition Leader Angus Taylor said Hanson should have to answer for discriminatory rhetoric.
“I judge people on their character and their conduct,” Taylor told a Sydney press conference. “If she wants to judge people based on the colour of their skin or their race, One Nation needs to explain that.”
Barnaby Joyce shied away from some of the harsher implications in Hanson’s speech and insisted One Nation was not demonising migrants.
Hanson on Wednesday took aim at the 51.5 per cent of Australians who were either born overseas or had a parent born overseas, saying the nation was losing its identity and values.
Appearing on the ABC’s 7.30 program on Wednesday night, Joyce denied One Nation was turning its back on that half of the population.
“What we’re saying is Australia has to have the capacity to bring in an Australian culture, a culture with guardrails, a culture that is able to absorb people so that we have harmony,” he said.
“We are not against immigration. We’re against immigration in such a form as we are unable to find the houses for people.”
Asked whether he agreed that Australians born overseas or with parents born overseas were destroying the country’s identity and values, Joyce said:
“I don’t know whether … well, she didn’t say that they were destroying Australia’s identity and values. She said that obviously it links to a problem that if you have an excess anywhere, it’s an indicator that you are not, sort of, self-fulfilling your own destiny, that you’re relying too much on trying to import your future and import your progress, and I don’t think that works.”
New One Nation MP David Farley said the speech was one Australians had been waiting for.
“It was direct shooting. It hit the targets. It was clear. It was succinct and it addressed a number of the elephants in the room,” Farley said of the sprawling address that ran well over time.
Farley, who was elected in a landslide victory in the Farrer byelection last month, outlined what he thought a monocultural society looked like.
“You’re an Australian first and your ethnicity or your creed come second.”
He denied migrants should have to abandon parts of themselves but that they should have to assimilate, while saying he was not bothered if people spoke a language other than English at home.
“The reality is we’re in a Christian-Judeo society with a law structure around us.”
Brittany Busch is a federal politics reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
