SYDNEY – Australia’s hard-right populist leader Pauline Hanson has called for a “monocultural society”, rejecting decades of multicultural policy and blaming the nation’s housing crisis on extremely high levels of immigration.
Hanson, 72, said the shortage of housing and rising property prices and rents were due to the increasing number of migrants, and then linked that to race and religion, arguing that the country was losing its identity.
“Undeniably, immigration or immigration policy has our country in the state of crisis,” she said.
“At the centre of this crisis is the utterly flawed policy of multiculturalism. We cannot be a multicultural society.
“We are a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural,” Hanson told the National Press Club on June 17, without elaborating on how that would lead to a reduction in home prices or affect the cost of living.
“Australians must live under the one-cultural umbrella.”
The surge in support for Hanson’s right-wing party mirrors the situation in other nations such as the US and Britain and across Europe, where support for traditional centrists has collapsed as voters shift to the extreme right and left.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese recently made that comparison, pointing to the rise of populism and “simplistic grievance-based politics” as a reaction to an economy that is not working for people any more.
More than half of Australians count at least one parent born overseas, and economists from the Reserve Bank of Australia onward maintain that immigration has been one of the centrepieces of the nation’s economic success.
Australia has been steadily paring back immigration in recent years after a surge following the Covid-19 pandemic, when borders had been closed and new applicant numbers built up.
That influx, together with a lack of newly built housing stock for a number of years, has caused stresses in the market.
Hanson and her One Nation party have surged in popularity in opinion polls over the past year, accelerating after the centre-right coalition’s vote collapsed in May 2025.
Australians have also been buffeted by resurgent inflation, higher interest rates and a surge in fuel costs due to the Iran war – helping One Nation in the polls.
Hanson in her speech blamed those challenges on immigration and the cost of green energy in the speech.
Albanese’s Labor Party has sought to mitigate the impact of some of these pressures with a temporary cut to fuel excise and proposed tax reforms to ease a housing affordability crunch.
In her speech to the press club, the first time Hanson has spoken at the venue in a 30-year political career, she pledged to “slash” migration, including by restricting entry of people “from places immersed in extremism like radical Islam”.
Hanson also blamed rising cost-of-living pressures on government policies meant to reduce carbon emissions and increase renewable energy.
“One Nation will end this renewable energy bribery – grants, tax incentives, concessional finance, even the government underwriting anything that sponsors the whole net-zero hoax,” she said, calling for the introduction of nuclear power and saying that the country could not do without coal and gas.
She also attacked the government’s recent tax changes, repeating her accusations that Labor had lied by announcing housing tax changes after ruling them out at the last election. BLOOMBERG
