Why Pauline Hanson's appearance on Tommy Robinson's podcast is so controversial

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has drawn criticism for appearing on a podcast with controversial far-right UK activist Tommy Robinson, where she pointed to the scrapping of the White Australia policy as the root cause of migration issues in the country.

The nearly hour-long conversation, recorded last week during Hanson's visit to the UK, was published on Robinson's podcast on Friday.

The appearance has since drawn criticism from other politicians, though not everyone in Canberra has condemned it.

What Hanson said

Between speaking about her scepticism about the COVID-19 vaccine, the potential for her daughter to eventually lead One Nation, and reflections on her time in prison and her burqa incidents in parliament, Hanson focused heavily on immigration.

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Asked by Robinson how Australia had ended up with "Pakistanis, Somalis, all of these African problems with violent Africans," Hanson said it started with the end of the White Australia Policy.

The postwar wave of migrants was different to today's situation because the new arrivals "really assimilated' and "learned to speak English", she said.

Hanson also suggested migrants were often coming to Australia "purely for the welfare system", claiming Australian Muslims were having children because the Quran taught "Allah will provide".

She said people were coming to Australia to take advantage of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), saying people from "Muslim areas" were "ripping the system off".

She said "a lot" of the scheme's nearly 800,000 participants came from those communities, but offered no evidence for the claim.

"But there’s a lot of Aussies too," she added. "So I’m not just going to pick them out, but it is quite known that in the Muslim streets you’ve got quite a lot in that street who are on the NDIS scheme."

Hanson has previously called for a "monocultural" society, saying multiculturalism in Australia has "failed".

During her first National Press Club address in June, she targeted the one in four Australians who speak other languages at home, saying it was impossible to generate social cohesion if people can't speak English.

'Un-Australian'

Health and NDIS Minister Mark Butler said he was loath to respond to the podcast because Robinson was a convicted criminal who'd been disowned by leading figures on the right, but added he'd never seen a breakdown in nationality or religious background of NDIS participants.

"I'm not sure where Ms Hanson is getting her figures from, but they've never been provided to me ... I suspect they don't exist," he told ABC Radio National on Friday.

Butler said Hanson needed to explain why she travelled to Europe at a time when Australians were struggling with the cost of living.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the comments and the decision to meet Robinson were appalling.

"Pauline Hanson is the most un-Australian politician in parliament, and she should come home, face the music, and apologise," she said.

One Nation MP and former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce defended Hanson's meeting with Robinson, saying on Thursday that he did not "support so much of what Tommy Robinson does", but that "it's incredibly important that we understand the social dynamic and how that came about".

"Tommy Robinson only exists because of the fractious nature of where England has arrived at," Joyce told ABC's Radio National.

"I think we all know that there is a massive following that he has, and we’ve got to understand that. What we’ve got to do in Australia is make sure we don’t replicate the social disharmony that has brought that about."

Who is Tommy Robinson?

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, is a far-right anti-Islam activist.

He co-founded the now-defunct English Defence League (EDL) and was a key figure behind last year's 'Unite The Kingdom' march in London — one of the country's largest ever far-right demonstrations.

Since leaving the EDL, he has rebranded as an independent journalist.

He has convictions including assault, fraud, stalking and contempt of court, and has previously called for people to "make war" on Islam.

He was most recently linked to Karl Stefanovic, who exited the Nine Network after interviewing Robinson on his own podcast and introducing him as someone he "admired" for his "courage".

That interview was pulled from YouTube, Spotify and Apple Podcasts before resurfacing on Hanson's and Robinson's channels.

Hanson, who calls Stefanovic a "good friend", later offered him a job in her office.

What was the White Australia Policy?

The White Australia policy was a set of laws, starting with the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, that limited non-British migration to Australia.

The policy never mentioned "white" or "race" explicitly, but its application was a tool of racial exclusion, aimed at keeping Australia British and limiting non-white — particularly Asian — immigration.

At its introduction, then attorney-general Alfred Deakin described the goal as the "prohibition of all alien coloured immigration", paired with reducing the number of non-white residents already in the country.

Its best-known mechanism was the dictation test.

Between 1901 and 1958, migrants could be asked by an immigration officer to write 50 words in any European language. Officers could pick a language they knew an applicant didn't speak — French or Italian for a South Asian person, for instance — and those who failed could be deported as coming from an "undesirable" country.

By 1947, only 2.7 per cent of the population had been born outside Australia, Ireland or the UK — and the Asian share of the population fell from 1.25 per cent in 1901 to around 0.21 per cent by the late 1940s.

It was wound back gradually after World War Two to admit European refugees, but wasn't fully dismantled until the Whitlam government abolished it in 1975, when the Racial Discrimination Act was passed, making it illegal to "offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate" someone because of their race.

— With additional reporting by Australian Associated Press.

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