Thousands of students walked out of class to tell Pauline Hanson to go to hell. Her party is polling 26 per cent.
High school students filled the State Library forecourt then shut four city streets, three months out from a state election One Nation is contesting.
Thousands of school and university students shut stretches of the Melbourne CBD on Thursday afternoon to tell Pauline Hanson where to go.
They gathered outside the State Library from 2pm, high schoolers in uniform packing the forecourt while organisers and police kept them off the Swanston Street tram line.
The chanting started well before the speeches did.
“No hate, no fear, Hanson is not welcome here.”
“We will fight and we will win, One Nation in the bin.”
In Sydney, where hundreds filled Town Hall, the crowd was blunter: “Pauline Hanson go to hell, take your racists there as well.”
Eliza Wynn travelled down from Ballarat for it.
The 17-year-old said she saw the strike advertised on Instagram and pushed her school to join in.
“She promotes herself as a person who’s there for the working class of Australia,” she told AAP. “She’s not.”
Long Pham, 16, said the rally was a show of unity rather than division.
“I believe everyone should be able to express their culture and shouldn’t have that right be taken away,” he said.
After speeches, including one from former Victorian Greens leader Samantha Ratnam, the march shut stretches of Swanston, Bourke, Elizabeth and La Trobe streets to traffic.
It landed three months out from a Victorian election One Nation is contesting, with the party’s primary vote at 26 per cent in early August according to Roy Morgan.
Senator Hanson wrote on social media the day before that students should be protesting the cost of living instead.
“Whether you know it or not, One Nation and I are fighting for you,” she wrote.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare wanted them in class.
“If people want to protest on the weekend, then fill your boots, but I want you at school when school is on, learning,” Mr Clare told reporters.
Premier Ben Carroll said much the same.
Rickie-Lee Tyrrell, One Nation’s MP in the Victorian parliament, said calling the party racist was false, and accused the Socialist Party of misleading students.
“These people are telling these children false information. We are not racist,” she told reporters at state parliament.
Most of the students who marched cannot vote. The voting age is 18.
Melbourne high schooler Jules Arpula said there was nothing more important to do on Thursday.
“We refuse to just adapt to the new ‘normal’ of Hansonism,” she said.
Thousands of high school students walked out against Hanson in eight cities in July 1998. She lost her seat three months later.
The next strike is planned for September.