Sunita SomvanshiThousands of Australian students walked out of schools on Thursday, August 13, 2026, to protest Pauline Hanson and One Nation—a party whose primary vote has surged from 4% to 26% in six years, newly outpacing Labor for the first time since early July.
The nationwide “Say No to Pauline Hanson” walkout, organized by the National Union of Students, saw students gather in capital cities and regional towns. Sydney’s Town Hall drew over 1,000 participants. Melbourne saw hundreds at the State Library and CBD. Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth, Newcastle, Wollongong, Bendigo, and Canberra all hosted demonstrations, with Perth drawing students from more than 100 local high schools. The Guardian covered the rallies live from multiple cities on the day.
Protesters chanted “migrants are welcome, racists are not” and “When I say Hanson, you say f*** off.” The walkout represented a rare show of organized student dissent directed at a political party—unusual in Australian political culture, where student activism typically focuses on issues like climate or civil rights rather than electoral opposition.
Avasa Bajracharya, a UNSW student and Sydney organizer, articulated the stakes bluntly: “How can you have a normal day at school when you know a Pauline Hanson One Nation government could take power and deport half your classmates? There’s no time to be complacent.”
Fifteen-year-old Georgia Newton, at the Melbourne rally, echoed the fear: “I’m tired of the injustices that Pauline Hanson is threatening… and the whole One Nation party is threatening to do, if they go into office.”
In response, Hanson tweeted: “Whether you know it or not, One Nation and I are fighting for you.” She separately called for schools to teach “how to think, not what to think,” suggesting students should instead protest why parents’ wages were stagnating and the cost of living was rising. ABC News reported Hanson’s message to students and her criticism of the walkouts.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare told students he supported weekend protests but wanted them in classrooms during school hours. Victorian Premier Ben Carroll urged protesters to “stay at school” and “focus on what your learning is in the classroom.”
Greens MP Jenny Leong addressed the Sydney crowd, calling Hanson a “racist f***” and telling students they were her “worst nightmare.”
The walkouts triggered counter-protests and confrontations. In Adelaide, One Nation South Australian MP Cory Bernardi confronted protesters on parliament steps, grinning at times while telling them they “don’t even know what they’re talking about.” In Brisbane, a One Nation supporter yelling “Pauline Hanson will save Australia” was arrested; the move-on direction was later issued. In Bendigo, roughly 20 teenage boys shouted racist and homophobic slurs and threw a cup of coffee at demonstrators during the rally organized by 17-year-old Hamish Knight. ABC’s comprehensive coverage documented the counter-protests in Adelaide, the arrest in Brisbane, and the coffee-throwing incident in Bendigo.
The protests align with sharply rising One Nation support. A Roy Morgan poll conducted August 3–9, 2026, found One Nation at 26% primary vote—up 2 points from the prior week and ahead of Labor at 25.5%. Sixty-one percent of respondents said Australia was “going in the wrong direction.” One Nation’s trajectory over six years marks a significant shift: the party polled around 4% in June 2020. Roy Morgan’s ongoing tracking shows One Nation overtaking the L-NP Coalition on primary vote as early as late July.
Benjamin Moffitt, a senior politics lecturer at Monash University, said walkouts are “one of the most effective ways for students (some too young to vote) to voice dissent,” noting that soft voters were “parking their vote, or flirting with the idea of voting One Nation.”
NUS General Secretary Akash Nagarajan stated: “Pauline Hanson actually doesn’t stand for things that benefit students’ lives… a lot of students are galvanised by that.”
Yerin Park, an ANU student and Canberra organizer, said she hoped the walkout would be “the start of a real kind of movement.” She had previously participated in walkouts during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
Hanson has called for a monocultural Australia in her public addresses and recently appeared on a podcast hosted by British far-right activist Tommy Robinson.
Thursday’s demonstrations reflected a generational divide, with young Australians too young to vote mobilizing against a party drawing support primarily from older age groups.