Source : Perth Now news
In June 2020, high schooler Yerin Park walked out of class to march to Canberra’s Parliament House in support of the Black Lives Matter movement.
At the time, One Nation’s primary vote hovered around four per cent – a figure that has since ballooned to 26 per cent according to the latest Roy Morgan poll.
Now an Australian National University student, Ms Park is concerned about how the meteoric rise of Pauline Hanson could impact both Australian politics and society.
The 23-year-old will sideline her studies again on Thursday afternoon in the largest collective protest against the conservative senator in recent memory.
Thousands of students are expected to rally in Students Say No to Pauline Hanson protests across major cities and towns.
“I’m hoping this will be the start of a real kind of movement,” Ms Park, who is organising the Canberra protest, told AAP.
“We want to make sure we lay the best basis for … an anti-racist, anti-sexist, anti-bigot response in Australia.”
Rally flyers distributed by the National Union of Students include calls to “fight against racism” and “stand up against the far right”.
Senator Hanson used her June National Press Club address to call for a monocultural Australia before appearing on a podcast hosted by British far-right activist and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson during a work trip to the UK last month.
Senator Hanson’s track record shows she has voted against education policies such as free TAFE and increasing funding for public schools, union general secretary Akash Nagarajan said.
“Pauline Hanson actually doesn’t stand for things that benefit students’ lives….(and) a lot of students are galvanised by that,” the 21-year-old said.
Rikkie-Lee Tyrrell, One Nation’s only member in Victorian parliament, said everyone had the right to protest, but expressed concern about who was behind the movement.
“Students really should be focusing on academics and I think the Socialist Party getting involved with students is the wrong way to go,” she told reporters.
A student walkout was one of the most effective ways for students, some of whom are too young to vote, to voice their dissent, Monash University senior politics lecturer Benjamin Moffitt said.
“We know that there’s a fair bit of… soft voters who are maybe parking their vote, or flirting with the idea of voting One Nation,” Mr Moffitt said.
“This is the kind of thing that these movements would be hoping to do to just get people to start questioning that.”
Senator Hanson declined AAP’s request for comment.
