Pauline Hanson has spent three decades presenting herself as the voice of "ordinary Australians": the battlers, the forgotten, the people supposedly ignored by the major parties.

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But her recent National Press Club address made something unmistakably clear. Hanson's rhetoric and her record have never been further apart. This isn't about personality. It's about evidence. And the evidence shows a politician whose positions would materially harm the very Australians she claims to champion.

There is a glaring flaw in Hanson's monocultural Australian vision that Hanson refuses to acknowledge: unless you are entirely Aboriginal, your family came from somewhere else. Hanson's worldview draws an imaginary line between "good" migrants (the ones whose ancestors arrived early enough to be invisible to her) and "bad" migrants (the ones she associates with cultural change). But choosing which groups are acceptable based on the actions of a tiny minority is not just illogical, it is self-defeating.

If Australia had applied Hanson's logic in earlier decades, we would have shut out the doctors who built our oncology and infectious-disease capacity, the scientists behind breakthroughs in medical research and engineering, the academics who shaped our education system, the athletes who represent us globally, and the care and agricultural workers who keep the country functioning.

To devalue entire communities because someone who shares their skin colour or religion once broke the law is not only irrational, it undermines the one cultural value we genuinely share: mateship. It also ignores a deeper truth: we cannot define Australian culture without multiculturalism. Our food, our fashion, our slang, our music, our sports, our celebrations, and even our democratic institutions all come from somewhere else. Even pavlova, Russell Crowe and Jimmy Barnes aren't Australian by birth.

Multiculturalism isn't a threat to Australian identity. It is Australian identity.

Hanson's monoculture argument collapses even further when you consider that she also proposes........

© Canberra Times