Pauline Hanson’s National Press Club address last week reminded us she doesn’t like multiculturalism, she sees immigration as responsible for most of the country’s problems, and she regards the values of some immigrants as inimical to a predominantly “Judeo-Christian society”. She called for “monoculturalism” to replace “multiculturalism”.

These kinds of views are not new for Hanson, nor for Australia. Billy Snedden, who served as Liberal immigration minister (and later Leader), called for a “monoculture” in 1969. The political right’s critique of multiculturalism took off in the 1980s and never really went away. Even left-wing critics saw it as a conservative ideology that celebrated food and dancing – “spaghetti and polka”, it was said – while leaving more fundamental inequalities in place.

Opponents of the diversity of Australia’s immigration intake have focused more attention on Muslims and Africans in this century than the last. But the habit of identifying a particular migrant group as a menace – usually recently arrived – is longstanding.

Australia’s long history of the ‘outsider’

In the 19th century, Irish Catholics were often viewed as a threat to the Protestant ascendancy. Southern Europeans such as Italians were “dagoes” when my (Australian-born) parents were young in the 1920s and ‘30s. The Dago threat was a favourite theme of future Labor prime minister Ben Chifley’s election campaign in 1928.

Later, Italians were called “wogs” but Hanson’s 1990s political adviser, John Pasquarelli, hilariously explains in his memoir that she used the offensive slang “Eyetie” for Italians, including to journalists.

In the 1980s and '90s, Vietnamese immigrants attracted epithets in school playgrounds and on graffitied walls. Asian immigration also drew the attention of conservatives who said it........

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