Pauline Hanson repeats her most shocking comment yet – and claims she was ‘right’ – as she calls on Australia to stop all immigration

Pauline Hanson has repeated her most infamous slur – that Australia was being ‘overrun’ by Asians – in a parliamentary speech calling on the country to halt immigration.

In a speech to the Senate shortly after 9am on Thursday, the One Nation leader called for a national vote to determine what Australians believe is an appropriate level of immigration.

She argued that citizens want immigration levels to be kept ‘low’ and repeated, with only a slight difference, her maiden speech to Parliament, which made her one of the most controversial figures in Australia.

She told how she ‘warned that we were in danger of being swamped by immigration from Asia’ in her 1996 speech, after being elected MP first for the seat of Oxley and then for Ipswich after the Liberal Party wrested from her distanced.

Nearly thirty years ago, Hanson immediately became a divisive figure when she said, “I believe we are in danger of being overrun by Asians.”

Speaking about the reaction to her speech to Parliament this morning, she said: “I was of course called a racist by the major parties and the major media who are aligned with a great Australia.

“But today, seven of the top 10 source countries for immigration to Australia are in Asia – including four of the top five – and the numbers are out of control.

‘Was I right? You would never admit it. But yes, that’s me.’

India was Australia’s top source of overseas migration in 2023, followed by China, the Philippines and the United Kingdom.

Unemployment fell to 3.7 percent in February, a big drop from a January high of 4.1 percent, new figures released Thursday showed.

But Senator Hanson reiterated her 1996 comments that migrants were receiving benefits.

“Immigration must be stopped at short notice so that our waiting lists for benefits are not filled by, in many cases, unskilled migrants who are not fluent in the English language,” she said.

Senator Hanson’s comments came as a newly appointed Liberal senator called for a reduction in immigration levels in Australia until housing supply can keep pace with rapid population growth.

A record number of 518,000 migrants moved to Australia in the last financial year.

Australia’s population growth rate is at its highest level since the early 1950s at 2.5 percent, with the net immigration rate more than double the 2007 mining boom level.

Dave Sharma, the former MP for the Sydney seat of Wentworth who revived his political career as a Liberal senator for New South Wales, says immigration must be reduced until Australia can provide adequate housing.

“The housing shortage is exacerbated by high immigration, which fuels demand for an already limited supply,” he said in his first speech to the Senate on Wednesday afternoon.

“Until we can accelerate the pace of our housing construction, we must reduce our immigration inflows, otherwise we will only put further pressure on our housing market.”

With Australia’s rental vacancy rate at a record one per cent, Senator Hanson said Prime Minister Anthony Albanese had ignored calls to stop high immigration.

“They are heard in the growing line of people waiting to inspect a single property in the hope of securing a rental,” she said.

“They are being heard at family dinner tables as Australians struggle to find the money for massive rent increases amid our cost of living crisis.

‘They can be heard in the daily traffic jams as record numbers of immigrants flood our cities and increase traffic congestion.

“They are being heard in the growing cities of tents, swags and cars popping up across Australia as more people become homeless and desperate.”

Sydney’s average house price of $1.396 million would require someone to earn more than $200,000 a year to even qualify for a home loan, CoreLogic data showed.

A worker with an average income of $98,218 can only afford a house worth up to $639,000, which would not buy the average-priced house in the capital worth $949,410.

Senator Sharma said unaffordable housing risks causing major social problems.

“Today’s younger Australians have done everything we asked of them,” he said.

“They’ve finished school, gotten a degree, found a job, paid taxes, and yet they find that no matter how much they earn or how hard they save, owning their own home is out of their reach.

“This is a violation of our social contract and if left unchecked, we are storing up huge problems for the future.

“We will undermine social mobility in Australia and entrench inequality.”

With Sydney home to a greater proportion of new migrants, Senator Sharma said the undersupply of housing was particularly prevalent in NSW.

“The failure here is largely a matter of supply,” he said.

“Consistently, over the past 20 years, we have simply failed to build enough new homes to meet the demand of the Australian population, and this problem is particularly acute in my home state of New South Wales.”

In the year to September, Australia built 109,322 homes and 60,813 units, construction activity data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows.

The 170,215 newly completed homes would house 425,538 homes, based on an average household size of 2.5 people per home at the last census.

The supply of new homes would leave a deficit of 92,462, based on new migrants.

Senator Sharma pointed out that NSW only builds 32,000 homes a year, which is well below the post-World War II level of 40,000, when Australia had a population of 7.4 million, down from 26.6 million people today.

‘We have to do better. “We need to enable more homes to be built, faster and cheaper, or we will leave Australia behind,” he said.

Last year he replaced former Foreign Minister Marise Payne as Liberal Senator for NSW and was previously Liberal Member for Wentworth in Sydney’s east until he was defeated by Teal independent Allegra Spender at the last election in 2022.

Australia’s former ambassador to Israel warned that anti-Semitism is a major threat following the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks.

“What we have seen in recent months has clearly crossed the Rubicon and left one community and one community alone – the Australian Jewish community – feeling unwelcome in their own country, fearful in their own neighborhoods and worried about the future what they have to deal with. here,” he said.

‘This is completely unacceptable. It’s also incredibly dangerous.’