One Nation party leader and Australian Senator Pauline Hanson has refused to walk back inflammatory remarks about the end of the race-based White Australia policy, doubling down on her anti-immigration rhetoric during a high-profile conservative gathering in London over the weekend. Just one day after sparking widespread public fury for comments lamenting the abolition of the century-old white-only immigration framework, Hanson addressed a black-tie dinner hosted by the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where she doubled down on her incendiary claims that mass immigration is ‘destroying’ Australia, mirroring what she claims is a crisis unfolding in the United Kingdom.
Hanson’s latest controversial remarks center on a familiar critique that has defined her political career: she argued that global political leaders are failing to protect national sovereignty, arguing they are increasingly beholden to international special interests rather than the needs of their own domestic populations. She told the assembled conservative audience that the shifts Australia has experienced from decades of high immigration mirror the challenges she says the UK now faces. ‘I see in Australia the problems that you have in Britain. I see immigration is destroying our country as it has destroyed yours,’ Hanson told attendees.
Hanson’s perspective on UK immigration was shaped by a recent guided tour of Luton, a town located 30 minutes northwest of central London that has become a flashpoint for debates over multicultural integration in the UK. Notably, her tour was led by far-right British activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, who is widely known by his professional pseudonym Tommy Robinson. Robinson has a lengthy criminal record that includes convictions for assault, stalking, and public order offenses, and he has previously faced formal investigations over his documented links to Russian state-backed propaganda networks. It was in a separate interview with Robinson that Hanson first made her remarks lamenting the end of the White Australia policy, triggering the initial wave of national and international backlash.
In her CPAC dinner speech, which was first brought to public attention by *The Sydney Morning Herald*, Hanson also repeated a common grievance among right-wing nationalist circles: she claimed that white communities in both Australia and the UK are being forced to feel collective shame for their national histories and are labeled inherently ‘white privileged.’ She argued that majority populations are being pressured to abandon their long-held national identities to accommodate new immigrant communities, rather than expecting new arrivals to integrate into existing national culture.
Hanson sought to frame her comments as not inherently anti-immigrant, noting that she has consistently supported immigration by people who commit to integrating into Australian society. ‘I have always welcomed people to Australia, a country built by the migrants that came there for a better way of life,’ she said. ‘And as I said at citizenship ceremonies: I welcome you as long as you give our country your undivided loyalty. But if you don’t, I’ll be the first one to take you to the airport, put you on plane, and wave you goodbye.’
To contextualize the ongoing controversy, the White Australia policy was formally enshrined in Australia’s 1901 Immigration Restriction Act, a collection of racially discriminatory laws designed to block non-European immigration to preserve a nation dominated by white, British-origin populations. The framework was gradually rolled back through mid-20th century reform, before former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam fully abolished the policy with bipartisan political support in 1973. The controversy has already drawn sharp condemnation from political opponents, with one senior Australian politician already comparing Hanson’s meeting with Robinson to a meeting with Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, and more details on the political fallout are expected to emerge in coming days.