All-round condemnation for Pauline Hanson over Indigenous slur

Government and opposition joined in criticising Pauline Hanson over her comments on a podcast last year declaring that Australia’s original occupants had “achieved nothing”.

Hanson’s derogatory remarks about First Nations people became a fresh issue for her on Monday, hard on the heels of the row over her criticism of Anthony Albanese’s late mother – for living too long in public housing – that surfaced at the weekend.

The comments about Maryanne Albanese were made on a podcast done earlier this year.

Hanson’s critics are carefully trawling her past comments.

Hanson told the conservative “JJ Podcast” that Australia’s Indigenous people were “the most primitive race on earth, and we’re supposed to be holding them up and saying what they’ve achieved.

They’ve achieved nothing.” She said a Western Australian teacher had written to her saying the curriculum had neglected teaching Australian history and had changed to be “leaning towards this Aboriginal culture and language.

"For what? What the hell have they done in this country? Supposedly 60,000 years, they’d never invented the wheel.

There was nothing there.

"What are we actually holding up? A few rock paintings?” The Minister for Indigenous Australians, Malarndirri McCarthy, said the comments were “totally outrageous, completely racist, but also divides our country in a way that we do not want to see happen right here in Australia”.

“What is really disappointing here is that that kind of commentary separates First Nations people unnecessarily from the rest of the country in terms of our culture, our songs, our stories.” Asked whether she’d consider a censure motion in parliament against Hanson, McCarthy said: “what the Senate chooses to do […] we will see in due course”.

The Senate last year censured and suspended Hanson for seven sitting days over wearing a burqa into the chamber.

She was also censured in March for questioning whether there were any good Muslims.

Back in 2022 the Senate passed a censure of her comment to Greens Senator Mahreen Faruqi that she should “piss off back to Pakistan”.

Faruqi won a court judgement against Hanson under the Racial Discrimination Act’s section 18C.