One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has thrown her weight behind mass deportations from Australia, signalling she wants to replicate the tough migration policies championed by hard-right figures in the United Kingdom.
The declaration is the latest flashpoint from her summer trip to the UK. Appearing on Seven’s Spotlight program on Sunday night, Senator Hanson toughened her position on immigration. The program filmed her meeting Restore Britain leader Rupert Lowe, who has promoted plans for the “mass deportations” of foreign-born migrants. Questioned about whether she backed the approach and wanted something comparable introduced in Australia, she replied: “I love it.” She added: “That’s exactly what Britain wants to do here.”
Senator Hanson’s travels have taken her through the UK and Italy, and she has drawn criticism along the way, including after being photographed on holiday at an upscale Italian hotel alongside mining magnate Gina Rinehart and attending a Dolce & Gabbana fashion show. She also featured on a podcast with far-right identity Tommy Robinson and addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in London, where she pushed for reduced immigration and attacked trans rights.
Pressed by Spotlight on exactly how she would carry out mass deportations and the practicalities involved, she was non-committal. “These are things that will be discussed with the relevant authorities to see the best way to go about it,” she said. “I’m not gonna give you politics on the run here of how I’m going to deal with it. This will be discussed … as I do with everything in policy, I discuss it with the relevant people.” She specified that her support extended to removing “the ones that are here illegally in the country”.
When asked whether she had any regrets about telling a Press Club audience that Australia ought to be a “monoculture”, her answer was blunt: “God, no.” She went on: “I’m not out there dragging them to come to Australia. They choose to come to Australia. Why do you think they chose to come to Australia? Because it’s the best country.”
The program also captured her touring areas of Britain with sizeable migrant communities in Robinson’s company. “I hate seeing the burqa,” she told Spotlight. “These women covered up, I can’t stand it.” When Robinson remarked, “From this point, every shop, every business, every home, everything is Muslim,” Hanson responded: “No, I don’t want this happening in Australia.”
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, carries a number of criminal convictions, among them the common assault of an off-duty police officer. Asked whether it was fitting for her to meet him given he had been refused entry to Australia on character grounds, Hanson said: “I’m listening to his experiences here in Britain. What has happened to his country, the town that he actually grew up in.”
Confronted over whether she regretted having previously called Islam a “disease”, she said “no.” She continued: “I do see it (Islam) as incompatible.” And when it was put to her that the more than one million Muslims living in Australia might be offended by what she was saying, she countered: “Does anyone take consideration of how I might be offended by what’s happening to the Australian cultural way of life.”
