Pauline Hanson’s latest encounter with multicultural Australia began with battered mackerel, chips and a photograph at a Townsville takeaway.
The One Nation leader visited Harold’s Fish and Chips on The Strand on the evening of September 2, where she ate with the shop’s Indian-Australian owner, Pankaj Patel. Hanson later posted their photograph to her social media accounts with a glowing review.
“I’m still a sucker for fish and chips,” she wrote. “Big thumbs up to Harold’s fish and chips on the Strand, Townsville. Battered mackerel and chips. 10/10.”
Patel told The Indian Sun the encounter had been brief and friendly. Hanson arrived at about 6pm, exchanged greetings with him and ate at the shop. Patel asked whether she would leave a Google review, while Hanson said she would take a photograph and share it on social media.
The image shows Hanson and Patel smiling at a table outside the shop, with the meal between them. There was no political discussion, Patel said, and Hanson visited as an ordinary customer.
The photograph nevertheless carried political meaning once it entered social media, where Hanson commands a large and highly engaged following.
Patel said another customer, after seeing him photographed with Hanson, told him he would not buy food from the shop. Patel responded that Hanson had been a customer and suggested the man try the food rather than judge the business by a photograph. The customer subsequently placed an order.
It is a small encounter and should not be made to carry more weight than it can. Yet it captures the tension inside Hanson’s latest attempt to expand One Nation’s appeal.
At one level, she remains one of Australia’s most trenchant critics of multiculturalism and high migration. At another, she has become increasingly willing to appear with Australians of migrant backgrounds and make a distinction between ethnicity and what she calls assimilation.
Hanson has not abandoned the central argument that has defined her politics. At the National Press Club in June, she declared that multiculturalism was an “utterly flawed policy” and said Australia should be multiracial but “monocultural”.
Pauline remains one of Australia’s most trenchant critics of multiculturalism and high migration. At another, she has become increasingly willing to appear with Australians of migrant backgrounds and make a distinction between ethnicity and what she calls assimilation
“We cannot be a multicultural society,” she said. “We are a multi-racial society, but we must be monocultural.”
She later compared that model to the Socceroos, arguing that players from different backgrounds could unite under one flag and one national identity. She rejected suggestions that her position meant banning foreign food or excluding Australians because of their ancestry.
The distinction is crucial to understanding Hanson’s current political pitch. She is not offering the established Australian conception of multiculturalism, under which people can share a national identity while retaining languages, customs and cultural traditions. Her model places acceptance within a single dominant national culture and expects migrants to assimilate into it.
Supporters regard that as a reasonable call for social cohesion and common civic values. Critics argue it makes belonging conditional and leaves Hanson and her party to decide which cultural practices are acceptable.
That tension is most visible in her treatment of Islam. Hanson has repeatedly campaigned against the burqa and niqab, and twice wore a burqa into the Senate as a political stunt. Her second appearance in November 2025 led to her being censured and suspended from the chamber.
She has also directed some of her sharpest language at Muslim migration and what she describes as radical Islam. At the same time, there is little evidence of a comparable campaign against Sikh or Hindu religious practice.
Hanson visited a Sikh gurdwara in Canning Vale in June, shortly after her National Press Club speech. One Nation’s Victorian candidates Jamie Baker and Natalie Adams are also scheduled to attend Melbourne’s Moon Festival in Box Hill on September 12, an event with strong links to the city’s Chinese and East Asian communities.
Her approach to Indian migrants is not new. At a Hindu Council of Australia Diwali event at Parliament House in 2018, Hanson said she had “no problems” with the Indian community because its members worked hard and had contributed to Australia.
“I am not anti-migrant at all,” she said at the time. “The Indian community has actually given a lot to this country. They work hard.”
But she followed that praise with a qualification: “People who don’t assimilate, who have no regard for this country or our laws or our way of life, don’t come here.”
The remarks marked a departure in tone from her 1996 first speech to Parliament, when she warned Australia was at risk of being “swamped by Asians”. They did not amount to an embrace of multiculturalism. Instead, they showed Hanson separating migrants she considers successfully assimilated from those she believes have not accepted Australian culture.
That distinction is gaining political importance as One Nation prepares for elections in Victoria and New South Wales.
Victoria will vote on November 28, with One Nation naming Warren Pickering as its state leader and announcing candidates across metropolitan and regional seats. Baker will contest Box Hill, while Adams is standing in the North-Eastern Metropolitan Region. The party is holding candidate events in Blackburn, Montmorency, Mornington and other suburbs as it tries to turn national polling support into an organised state campaign.
For One Nation, reaching beyond an older, predominantly Anglo-Australian base is now an electoral necessity. Victoria’s outer suburbs include large Indian, Chinese, Sikh, Hindu and other migrant communities, many of them concerned about housing, energy bills, crime, education and the cost of living
A Victorian poll published by DemosAU in June put One Nation on 23 per cent, although individual polls should be treated cautiously and support may not translate evenly across electorates. Election analyst Antony Green has noted that recent polling points to an unusual three-way contest involving Labor, the Coalition and One Nation in a state where Hanson’s party has historically been weak.
The party is also moving beyond its traditional campaign base. Hanson and Pickering reportedly hosted a $2,000-a-head lunch with business figures at Melbourne’s Vue de Monde this week, while local candidate meetings are being promoted with tickets as low as $15.
In New South Wales, One Nation last week appointed former investment banker and trade official Mike Newman as its state leader ahead of the March 2027 election. Newman has spent much of the past 25 years in Japan and speaks Japanese. He will contest the Labor-held Hunter seat of Cessnock, while cattle farmer and coal industry worker Stuart Bonds will lead the party’s upper house ticket.
Hanson presented Newman’s international business experience as an asset, while maintaining One Nation’s campaign against high migration, multicultural policy and what the party calls “wokery”. The appointment suggests the party wants candidates who can speak to business, trade and economic management as well as cultural grievances.
This expansion follows One Nation’s victory in the Western Australian seat of Secret Harbour, where Luke Herdegen became its first lower house MP in the state. It also comes as the party polls at levels once considered unreachable.
The figures vary. A Roy Morgan poll conducted from August 17 to 23 placed Labor and One Nation level on 27 per cent, with the Coalition on 21 per cent. A later Essential poll put One Nation at 23 per cent, down from 28 per cent in May, while Labor and the Coalition were level on 26 per cent. The difference is a reminder that the direction of support may be clearer than its precise size.
For One Nation, reaching beyond an older, predominantly Anglo-Australian base is now an electoral necessity. Victoria’s outer suburbs include large Indian, Chinese, Sikh, Hindu and other migrant communities, many of them concerned about housing, energy bills, crime, education and the cost of living.
Those voters cannot be assumed to support Labor or the Coalition. Nor can they be treated as a single progressive or pro-migration bloc. Some are socially conservative, sceptical of government and receptive to arguments about lower migration, family values and national identity.
Hanson appears to recognise that opening. Her emerging message is that Australians from different racial backgrounds may have a place in One Nation’s Australia if they accept its idea of a common culture.
Whether that is a genuine expansion of the party’s idea of belonging or a selective form of inclusion will remain contested. Her policies on migration and multiculturalism have not softened, and her record continues to shape how ethnic and religious communities receive her.
The photograph at Harold’s Fish and Chips does not settle that debate. It does, however, show Hanson testing how far her appeal can travel, and whether a party built around opposition to multiculturalism can win support inside the diverse Australia it seeks to redefine.
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