‘We are not stupid kids’: Perth students rally against Pauline Hanson

Thousands of high school and university students converged on Forrest Chase in the Perth CBD on Thursday afternoon to protest One Nation and its leader Pauline Hanson’s “racist” policies.

The nationwide “students say no to Hanson” protest, organised events in state and territory capitals on Thursday and attracted students angry at the ascendent party’s policies.

Chants including “Pauline Hanson go to hell, take One Nation there as well” were yelled out, while protesters waved signs with slogans calling out her policies.

A student from a high school in the Perth Hills named Sadie was one of four to give a speech, saying high schoolers were “encouraged to stay silent, to stay to the back until we’re 18, like voting once every three years is a privilege to look forward to”.

“We are meant to watch our schools lose funding, a genocide unfold, and the cost of living go up exponentially. And you just want us to finish our maths homework,” she said to cheers from the crowd.

“Students have always played a core part across the world in strikes and protests.

“When an injustice is happening, we are the ones who will live with it.

“We will graduate into a world which hates us and is pitted against our success, and [politicians] call that caring about us. I call bullshit.”

Sadie told the crowd One Nation believed students were protesting because they had been “brainwashed” by their teachers, or wanted an excuse to skip school.

“We are not fighting on behalf of an organisation or as a means to skip school. We are not stupid kids wanting to sit at the adult table. We believe in getting Hanson’s fascist ideas out of our country,” she said.

“We want our future to be a place for all.

“The right will not pause until we graduate, or until the summer holidays, or our exams are over. But neither will we.”

One of the event organisers said she believed students from 100 different high schools had attended, alongside university students.

In response to the protests, Hanson posted on X early on Thursday morning, stating that schools should “teach young Australians how to think, not what to think”.

“If you want to protest something, protest why your parents’ wages are going backwards and the cost of everything is going up,” she wrote.

“The Labor Greens government is selling out your future, and you’ll inherit a weaker, poorer and less safe country. Whether you know it or not, One Nation and I are fighting for you.”

WA Principals Federation president Kya Graves said it was the purview of parents to excuse their children from school to attend.

“Attendance is taken generally in high schools every session of the day, and so we would know that a student was missing, and a phone call or a text message would probably, in all likelihood, go home advising the parent that the student wasn’t in a class that afternoon,” she told Radio 6PR.

“Nothing has come out from the department instructing principals on how to and how to react to this protest today.

“In reality, it’s not aimed at secondary students in the main part and whilst I think, from my perspective as the president of the PFWA, it’s great that our young people are aware and exercising their democratic rights to be vocal about their opinions politically in a correct manner, it’s not really the business of schools.”

One Nation MP Barnaby Joyce accused “socialist” school teachers of encouraging students to participate in protests against his party, as federal Education Minister Jason Clare cautioned children to stay in class and move their protest to the weekend.

“[Students have] been told to hate this country,” Joyce said.

“Do you honestly believe … that three weeks ago those children of their own volition were saying: ‘I think I’m going to have a political protest against a political party?’ No, they just wanted to go to school and play soccer with their mates.

“Socialist teachers, left-wing teachers are making their statement and using the kids as a prop, and that’s very, very wrong.”