The fight against One Nation is a fight for the future of this country, and the Greens must not be spectators

By Dr Mehreen Faruqi

One Nation is not just another party. Treating their rise like a fascinating political upheaval rather than the early moments of a potential fascist future is a dire mistake, writes Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi.

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The Australia of One Nation’s fantasies is a mean and selfish place. A place where neighbour turns on neighbour, where women’s rights to choose are wound back and where we fight each other for scraps dropped from above by the billionaires pulling the strings.

And that is only some of what they are willing to say out loud. We’ve seen time and again that One Nation harbours white supremacists and far-right sympathisers at all levels. Before too long we could see ICE-style squads roaming our streets, rounding people up and putting them in camps. Think I’m exaggerating? Look at the USA. We are dangerously close to our own local Trump fanatics making reality of their racist visions.

The media giving Hanson a free pass on their platforms without even questioning the hate she peddles has real consequences: using migrants as punching bags hurts and harms us. When we hear Barnaby Joyce falsely blame the housing crisis on people who look like they’ve recently arrived, we know he’s not talking about young Brits on working holiday visas.

He’s talking about people who look like me and my family. I meet people of colour every day who tell me they’ve lived here for generations, they’ve worked hard for decades, they’ve contributed unreservedly to this country, and they don’t deserve this rotten treatment.

For nearly three decades One Nation has been running the same grift: sowing division, fuelling bigotry and racism while selling out working people to their wealthy donors. It’s a hell of a business model. The target has shifted over time, now centred on Muslims, but the product is identical. Make no mistake: if you value a multicultural country, its neighbourhoods, its culture, its economy, One Nation wants to take that from you and turn our society into a small, bleak and bland monoculture that swallows up our richness and vibrancy.

One Nation is not just another political party. They are a racist movement dressed in electoral clothing. Treating this like a fascinating political upheaval rather than the early moments of a potential fascist future is a dire mistake.

I’ve been told plenty of times that highlighting One Nation’s racism will alienate disenfranchised voters driven to One Nation by the cost-of-living crisis and collapsing trust in public institutions. But we can’t deceive ourselves by hiding from the fact that One Nation’s agenda looks awfully like a plan to return to the White Australia era. There’s no way around that. We must tackle this head on while we also tear down the old parties and their hollow politics that have brought us here.

At times of crisis easy answers can seem like a solution. The reality is One Nation is not an anti-establishment party. Mining companies say jump, One Nation says how high. The corporations screwing over minimum-wage workers have nothing to fear, because One Nation backs the bosses every single time. They are more interested in protecting the grocery giants Coles and Woolies than making sure no child goes hungry.

If you are angry at the major parties selling you out, One Nation will do it faster without a hint of regret. This isn’t an argument for the status quo, far from it. We’ve had enough of the establishment parties that don’t blink twice about supporting Trump’s wars, about criminalising our right to protest and selling our future to the highest bidder. This is a call to kick them to the curb.

Labor has done nothing with their commanding majority in parliament except tinker at the edges while people struggle to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. They fumble around to respond to One Nation’s attacks on migrants because dog whistling has been their strategy for years. Labor can’t stop One Nation.

You don’t debate a far-right movement into irrelevance. You call it out. You fight it. The Greens must lead this fight against the far-right. We cannot be spectators. We don’t take billionaires’ money like Labor, the Liberals and One Nation. But that cannot be an excuse for missing the moment.

I’ve spent a decade taking One Nation on, in parliament, in the streets, in the courts. I’m not done. You shouldn’t be either.

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Abut the author

Dr Mehreen Faruqi is the Deputy Leader of the Australian Greens and Senator for NSW. She is a civil and environmental engineer and a lifelong activist for social, environmental, and racial justice. In her time in Parliament, Mehreen has continued to push to dismantle systems of power, privilege, and patriarchy. Mehreen holds the Anti-Racism, International Aid & Global Justice, Climate Adaptation, Resilience & Emergency Management, Tertiary Education, Animal Welfare, and Republic portfolios for the Greens.