Perth Voice Interactive

A VISIT from Pauline Hanson in the heart of Leederville attracted a crowd of some 30 odd protesters who verbally shamed the ticket holders as they entered Ms Hanson’s hired venue at Subiaco Football Club’s function room.

Ms Hanson was in town for the $30-a-head event to promote the case for voting no to constitutional recognition of Aboriginal people, which she argues would “divide” Australians based on race. 

As ticketholders navigated through protesters they were met with boos and cries of “racism”, and about a dozen police stood on hand to shepherd protestors back and prevent the gauntlet from becoming a blockade.

But Ms Hanson herself slipped in via the oval-side entrance, unseen by anyone save a few Subiaco footy players in mid-Monday night practice.

Once inside Ms Hanson responded to protestors assertion that the country “always was, always will be” Aboriginal land.

“No it isn’t,” Ms Hanson said. “It’s Australia’s land.”

In an online stream of her speech posted by One Nation’s WA branch, Ms Hanson referred to the protesters as “ratbags” and said she’d faced bigger crowds of opposition before in Perth during the early days of her political career. 

She said some of those early protestors had come up to her years later and told her “I owe you an apology… I’ve actually grown up and now I understand what you were talking about and now I vote for you.”

Leederville isn’t very friendly territory for One Nation: In the 2022 election the party’s candidate Cameron Bailey got eight votes out of the 878 ballots lodged at the nearest polling place at Leederville TAFE. That amounted to 0.96 per cent of votes cast there, compared to a national One Nation average of 4.96 per cent.

by DAVID BELL