News and politics live updates: One Nation leader Pauline Hanson speaks at National Press Club in Canberra

Pauline Hanson has declared immigration has driven Australia into a “state of crisis” and called for a “monocultural society” as she vowed One Nation would fight for people to get their country back.

In her wide-ranging inaugural speech at the National Press Club – briefly interrupted by a Banksy-style protest stunt orchestrated by GetUp – the One Nation leader said that people had been trying for years to silence her.

She argued that hate preachers should be deported, defended her plan to scrap financial support for Indigenous Australians, and pledged to tackle the “transgender insurgency”, dump renewables, and back the construction of one nuclear power plant on the east coast.

Immigration

Senator Hanson said immigration “has our country in the state of crisis” after the post-COVID surge of arrivals that hasn’t been offset by people leaving, and declared multiculturalism an “utterly flawed policy”.

“We cannot be a multicultural society. We are a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural,” she said.

She questioned whether the “Australian electorate” supported the fact that 51 per cent of people living here were either born overseas or had migrant parents, contrasting it with the US where she said the figure was 14 per cent. Pe

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Federal police will investigate how left-wing activists smuggled a “drop down screen” into Canberra’s National Press Club to disrupt Pauline Hanson’s highly anticipated address to journalists on Wednesday.

As the Senator delivered her speech to the “high security event” the banner depicting the One Nation leader was revealed on stage, with the caption: “I opposed a pay rise for workers while I took a $100,00 pay rise for myself”.

Following the NPC address, GetUp CEO Paul Ferris claimed responsibility for the stunt, and in a separate message to supporters the organisation asked them to donate “whatever you can” to help campaign against Senator Hanson’s party.

“Pauline Hanson has built her entire brand on being for the battlers. But her record tells a different story. One Nation has consistently opposed wage rises, affordable childcare, increases to the aged pension, and housing affordability measures,” Mr Ferris said in a statement.

GetUp’s high-profile campaigns manager, David Sharaz, was seated in the press club audience as the banner was gradually unveiled on stage, but the organisation has refused to say what role he may have played or who sponsored his attendance at the event.

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Political support is growing to build a future nuclear submarine base in the New South Wales city of Newcastle, but China’s part ownership of the local port remains a hurdle, and the Albanese government insists no decisions will be made until next decade.

Soon after unveiling the AUKUS plan, the then Morrison government released a shortlist of three potential sites for a new submarine base on Australia’s east coast, including Port Kembla, Newcastle and Brisbane.

The Nightly has confirmed the Defence Department’s initial preference was for Port Kembla south of Wollongong, but at the time Prime Minister Scott Morrison believed Newcastle would be better placed to support nuclear-powered technology.

The NSW South Coast Labor council has since led a vocal campaign against any move to establish a naval presence at Port Kembla, arguing it would put a military target on the region and displace existing manufacturing and renewable energy jobs.

In recent months however, Labor MPs whose electorates are in Newcastle, and the surrounding Hunter region, have expressed growing support for placing the future AUKUS facility in their area.

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Facing the might of Canberra’s leading political journalists, Pauline Hanson has demonstrated why she has become Australia’s most popular political leader.

On Wednesday, at Canberra’s National Press Club — a venue many conservative politicians consider inherently hostile — she was calm, clear and certain of what Australia should be: a single-culture, English-speaking nation that celebrates Western civilisation, individual freedom and national sovereignty.

Before she got to the substance of her speech, the One Nation leader opened with a jibe at one of her favourite targets, the media.

“Is Channel 9 here?” she said. “No, Gina’s jet is not broken. I did come cattle class. I just wanted to get that out of the way.”

The comment, which got plenty of laughs, was a reference to a now-infamous encounter at Perth Airport a week ago when a young reporter challenged the senator over a small plane provided by businesswoman Gina Rinehart to the One Nation campaign.

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An accused Islamic State bride charged in Australia’s first crimes against humanity prosecution has been refused bail after a magistrate found she posed an unacceptable terrorism risk and there was no compelling evidence she had renounced the extremist group.

After two days of bail hearings in the Melbourne Magistrates Court, Chief Magistrate Lisa Hannan delivered her decision on Wednesday afternoon, refusing Zeinab Ahmad’s bail application.

The 31-year-old was arrested last month upon her return to Australian from Syria, where she is accused of enslaving a Yazidi girl while living under Islamic State rule.

The court heard Ms Ahmad failed to establish the “exceptional circumstances” required for her release and that the prosecution had successfully demonstrated she posed an unacceptable risk to community safety.

“I am satisfied the prosecution has discharged the burden of establishing that there is a risk of the applicant endangering the safety or welfare of any other person, and that that risk is unacceptable,” Judge Hannan said.

“I am further satisfied that there are simply no conditions capable of making that risk acceptable because of the nature of the risk and its basis in belief and apparent ideology.”

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The progressive activist group GetUp says it disrupted Pauline Hanson’s press club speech by unveiling a banner on stage, because the “occassion deserved some honesty”.

During the One Nation leader’s address, a banner attacking Senator Hanson’s parliamentary voting record appeared behind her, but was quickly pulled down by press club staff.

In a statement GetUp CEO Paul Ferris said the stunt was justified to draw attention to One Nation’s record.

“Pauline Hanson has built her entire brand on being for the battlers. But her record tells a different story,” he said.

“One Nation has consistently opposed wage rises, affordable childcare, increases to the aged pension, and housing affordability measures.

“We thought the occasion deserved some honesty. So we provided it.”

In a fiery National Press Club address, Pauline Hanson has unleashed on the Albanese Government warning that One Nation is rising because Australians are “mad as hell” and ready to take their country back.

“Remember, when first campaigning to be elected, the Albanese Government said it would reduce power bills by $275. Surely the slogan, ‘Fire the Liar’ has relevance to millions of Australians. Was it a lie to campaign in 2022 on the slogan “A better future”? Is this how Australians feel today?” Senator Hanson said.

“The cost of energy feeds into everything we use, we eat, we manufacture, everything. So, food is dearer, housing is dearer, rents are dearer, there is your cost of living crisis.

“Albanese lied to become elected, and Australians are paying for it.

“How many times were you, the media, condemned for simply asking before the last election whether a Labor Government would make changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing? Didn’t they lie to the electorate?

“I am meant to be a voice for that electorate. The public are sick to the back teeth with these lies.

“When the Prime Minister was delivering a speech to miners in the coal mining region of NSW, the Hunter Valley, in the 2025 election campaign, did he fall off the stage and deny it?

“Let me be blunt, if you lie once, why won’t you lie again and again and again?”

Read the full speech here.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has told a Special Broadcast Service journalist she’ll “be out of a job” during her Q&A at the National Press Club.

After the Queensland Senator declared she’d axe the taxpayer-funded media outlet in her earlier speech, SBS Australia’s Chief Political Correspondent Anna Henderson questioned her position.

Henderson had mentioned that SBS provides a news service to Australians across 60 languages.

During some back-and-forth over the question, Senator Hanson told Henderson she could understand her curiosity as “you’re going to be without a job”.

“I want them to be able to learn to speak English before they get here to get their citizenship and that will help them assimilate into our society,” Senator Hanson said.

“So, where’s the assimilation? We are a monocultural nation, not… multicultural, and our language is English, and that will help people actually be able to go out there and get a job.”

She claimed that people could get their news from other sources online and that “Sky is great to go and look for news”.

Sentator Hanson added that she’d turn the ABC

Pauline Hanson has been quizzed on her views about abortion and whether she would support setting time limits on when pregnant women can have the procedure.

Senator Hanson has told the press club that “it’s a discussion that needs to be had” but declared that aborting a baby “the day before birth is abhorrent and disgusting”.

“That’s what I oppose, and that’s what many, you know, common sense Australians believe.”

“I’m not advocating the time at this stage, but I can tell you, even from 20 weeks, I think it’s too, too late to have an abortion”

“But definitely, you know, 39 weeks to have an abortion that is clearly not humane”.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has labelled government ministers “incompetent” and insisted the public service is “poorly run”.

“I’ve spoken to them on the floor of Parliament, and I listen to their comments. They are incompetent, and they are useless,” she told the National Press Club on Wednesday.

“They don’t know what they’re doing, they don’t know how to run their portfolios, and they rely on the departments and the bureaucrats to give them the information.

“The public service has been, I think, poorly run for a long, long time.”

She also told the Press Club that she “loves” her work but tried to stay out of Canberra as much as possible. It comes as she was criticised recently for her low attendance in Senate Estimates.