One Nation demands migrants must be ‘Australians first’
New arrivals to Australia would need to put their ethnicity second to national identity as part of One Nation’s plan to crack down on migration.
Migrants would be free to speak their own languages at home but should be “Australians first”, One Nation has declared, after the party’s leader called for a monoculture.
A day after Pauline Hanson’s first address to the National Press Club, One Nation MP David Farley said new arrivals needed to be Australians first and put their ethnicity or creed second.
“They can be an Australian migrant, or an Australian-Italian, Australian-Greek, or an Australian-African. They’re not African-Australians, they’re Australians first,” he told ABC Radio on Thursday.
Farley said he wasn’t concerned about people speaking other languages at home, but argued that to assimilate into Australia, migrants needed to speak English.
“There’ll be times when they’re bringing family and friends into the country on holidays etcetera, where that is adaptable … but the reality is we’ve adapted English as a language, that’s the Australian language,” he said.
Pressed on a separate One Nation policy announced by Senator Hanson on Wednesday to make the ABC subscription-only in the cities, Farley said he hadn’t given it a lot of thought.
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“How would it work? I’d imagine commerce, financial advisors would soon have an opportunity to look at it and say ‘would a subscription model be economically attractive for Australians to subscribe to?’.”
Australia’s special envoy to combat Islamophobia Aftab Malik said Senator Hanson’s comments, which included a fiery critique of “radical Islam”, were opportunistic and fear-mongering.
“Australia is multi-religious, multi-ethnic, multi-faith. It’s a rich dynamic culture in which people speak many different languages,” he told ABC Radio.
“That’s a dystopian vision that she has of Australia.”
Government and opposition frontbenchers have also criticised a stunt during Senator Hanson’s speech at the National Press Club that is now under police investigation.
GetUp!, a progressive activist group, has claimed responsibility for a banner that unfurled behind the One Nation leader as she was outlining her vision for Australia.
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The banner accused Senator Hanson of opposing a pay rise for workers while taking a $100,000 salary increase for herself.
Nationals frontbencher Kevin Hogan said the move had “completely backfired” on the progressive campaign group.
“(It) makes them look like dills, and makes her look like a victim in the sense that she’s being picked on, and that never works,” he told ABC Radio.
Environment Minister Murray Watt said while he supported the message and protests at political speeches were relatively common, there were better ways to make the point.
“I wouldn’t want to support a stunt like that,” he said.
“There are more appropriate ways to get that message out there than what happened yesterday.”
The National Press Club apologised to Senator Hanson and said two people entered the venue on Tuesday afternoon to install a drop-down screen without permission.
None of its staff or contractors had any involvement, the club said.
ACT Policing has confirmed it received a complaint over the “alleged unauthorised access and interference with equipment” and said AFP forensic officers were investigating.
Senator Hanson’s rise in the polls was a reflection of working people feeling they were being economically left behind, YouGov director of public data Paul Smith said.
“Our polling shows that the number one reason for backing One Nation is not the leader, but the feeling of being unrepresented by the two major parties,” he told AAP.
“For One Nation to win and keep the votes they have, they need to address the economic problems faced by working people about wages, housing, and generally being on their side of the economy.”
A number of opinion polls have shown One Nation now leads political parties as Australians’ first choice, while support for the coalition has plunged to record lows.
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