Thousands of high school and university students walked out of classrooms and onto the streets across Australia on Thursday 13 August in a national show of opposition to Pauline Hanson and One Nation, as the party enjoys a renewed surge in political support.

Under the banner “Students Say No to Hanson”, young Australians rallied in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and regional centres, carrying handmade signs and chanting against racism while defending migrants, international students and multicultural Australia.

The demonstrations were organised principally by the National Union of Students (NUS), alongside high school activist groups, and attracted hundreds in several capital cities and thousands nationally.

In Sydney, more than 1000 students gathered at Town Hall before marching through the CBD. Among the placards visible in the diverse crowd was a message that summed up a central theme of the demonstrations: “Immigrants are welcome. Hanson is not.”

Other students carried signs declaring “Hands off our futures” and “Say no to Hanson”. Police moved a small number of One Nation supporters away from the broader demonstrations in Sydney and Brisbane.

Young Australians defend multiculturalism

The demonstrations come amid a renewed national debate over immigration, multiculturalism and Australian identity.

Hanson has increasingly blamed high migration for pressure on housing and services and has targeted international students as part of One Nation’s immigration campaign.

More significantly, in June she used her first National Press Club address in three decades to advocate an end to multiculturalism, while last month she told a Perth gathering she did not want migrants coming to Australia from what she described as “radical Islamic countries”.

For Muslim Australians and other culturally diverse communities, the student demonstrations therefore carried a significance extending beyond party politics.

Many of the young protesters have grown up in an Australia where classmates, neighbours and friends come from Muslim, Asian, African, Middle Eastern and other migrant backgrounds.

NUS president Felix Hughes, one of the organisers of the national action, has argued that migrants and international students are being made political scapegoats for problems such as housing affordability and the cost of living.

The Brisbane rally, attended by about 500 students and supporters, included international students, First Nations people and workers, with protesters specifically challenging One Nation’s policies on migration, universities and student debt.

Thousands rally from Sydney to Adelaide

In Melbourne, hundreds of students from more than 100 Victorian schools gathered outside the State Library of Victoria before marching through the CBD. Police intervened when opposing protesters appeared, keeping the groups apart.

One of the largest reported gatherings was in Adelaide, where more than 2,000 students from around 40 schools and colleges assembled outside Parliament House before marching towards Rundle Mall.

Organisers there announced that another student walkout was planned for 17 September, indicating that the campaign against One Nation is likely to continue.

Smaller demonstrations also extended beyond the capital cities, including actions in Bendigo, Wodonga and the Hunter region, giving the protests a distinctly national character.

A battle over Australia’s future

The protests came on the same day Foreign Minister Penny Wong delivered a strong defence of multicultural Australia, rejecting Hanson’s advocacy of a “monocultural society” as a “melancholic fantasy”.

Wong argued that multiculturalism strengthened rather than weakened Australia and warned against politics that sought to turn Australians against one another.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of Thursday’s demonstrations was their generational echo.

Almost three decades after school students protested Hanson during her first political rise, another generation is taking to Australian streets over many of the same questions of race, immigration and belonging.

For the thousands who marched this week, the message was simple: their vision of Australia’s future is multicultural—and they intend to have a say in defending it.