Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong will argue in a major address on Friday that One Nation leader Pauline Hanson's call for a monoculture risks damaging the national interest and undermining social cohesion, labelling the concept a 'melancholic fantasy' that would isolate Australia internationally.
Wong calls Hanson's monoculture push a 'melancholic fantasy' harmful to national security
Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong will argue in a major address on Friday that One Nation leader Pauline Hanson's call for a monoculture risks damaging the national interest and undermining social cohesion, labelling the concept a 'melancholic fantasy' that would isolate Australia internationally.
Wong, described as the first Asian-Australian to serve in federal cabinet, is delivering the address at the Lowy Institute in an annual lecture named for diplomat and intelligence chief Allan Gyngell. According to a preview of the speech, she will say: 'The call for a monoculture is a call for Australia to curtail our choices and cut off our connections. To look inwards, to have no friends to work with, no partners to trade with, no opportunities to grow from. To be lonely in a dangerous world.'
Hanson said in June that Australia must exist as a 'monocultural society', attributing high levels of overseas migration to what she described as a loss of national identity and values. Her speech drew criticism across the political spectrum. Hanson conceded that modern Australia was multiracial but argued that only one 'cultural umbrella' should exist.
Wong's speech follows a Guardian Essential poll from last month that recorded One Nation attracting 25% of the primary vote, behind Labor on 31% but ahead of the Coalition on 22%, a result described in the source as record support for the party.
The address also includes a reordering of Australia's foreign policy priorities, placing the Indo-Pacific region first. Wong points to multilateral bodies including the Pacific Islands Forum, enhanced cooperation with the European Union, and closer engagement with Quad partners as evidence of work underway since Labor's 2022 election victory. She frames this partly as a response to a January speech by Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, in which he lamented the decline of the post-Second World War rules-based order and called for middle powers to act together more strategically.
On broader security, Wong warns that nations face 'weaponised supply chains, flagrant disinformation, and foreign interference,' and describes artificial intelligence as 'an era-defining technology — reshaping economies, societies and national power — with benefits and risks in every domain,' adding that it 'will spread faster and disrupt more than any revolutionary technology before it.'
- The source does not state whether Hanson or One Nation has responded to Wong's address specifically.
- The source does not provide details of the methodology or sample size behind the Guardian Essential poll figures cited.
- The source does not state which other politicians or parties criticised Hanson's June speech 'across the political spectrum.'
- The source does not detail what specific foreign policy changes, beyond the listed multilateral engagements, Wong's reordering of priorities entails.
- The source does not state whether the Lowy Institute address has been delivered at the time of publication or was still forthcoming.
Read the original at The Guardian