By Jonny Hill
On 17 September 2026, the second national protest led by high school and university students occurred in response to One Nation’s growing popularity. This followed the first national protest held on 13 August 2026.
Hundreds of students across the country walked out of classes, including students in Canberra, who attended protests held at Garema Place from 1pm to 3pm.
Observer interviewed Ell Lappin, a member of Socialist Alternative (SAlt) and chair of the most recent rally. Observer also spoke to Yerin Park, a member of SAlt and chair of the first rally, to discuss the impact of these protests.
When asked what motivated the need for a second protest, Lappin explained that “after the first rally, there was a bunch of attacks on the high schoolers and university students that attended the rallies”. Lappin stated these attacks were “basically demeaning” towards “the positions of these young people who, very accurately, can assess the harm that One Nation would do if they came into power.”
The protest comes after One Nation recently won the by-election in the electorate of Secret Harbour in Western Australia.
“They have become more popular and there’s been a complete launch and normalisation of their politics in the last two weeks,” Lappin commented. “So we thought well, it’s definitely necessary now that there’s such a resolve of young people to come to these rallies.”
The protests saw school students walk out of classes during the school day. Some politicians have criticised the protests, such as Education Minister Jason Clare saying, “if people want to protest on the weekend, then fill your boots, but I want you at school when school is on.”
When asked about the role of high schoolers, Park explained that though the protests were “mostly based on the university campuses, we found that there was a lot of take-up from high schoolers as well”. She noted that they discovered “Instagram pages set up by high schoolers to organise their own schools to come along”.
Recently, One Nation has sparked intense controversy with their immigration policies. This includes their pledge to reduce international student places from 590,000 to 350,000, and also reduce the number of temporary graduate visas from 270,000 to 40,000.
“This attack on migrants and international students is completely abhorrent … this kind of crazy rhetoric that exists about them [immigrants] that they’re just trying to come in and steal everything, it’s completely racist,” said Lappin.
Another focus of the protests were Pauline Hanson’s comments regarding First Nation Australians during a resurfaced radio interview. In the interview, Hanson referred to First Nations peoples as “the most primitive race on earth”, sparking widespread controversy and condemnation.
“I mean it’s absolutely despicable what One Nation and Pauline Hanson have said about Indigenous people in this country,” said Lappin. “They really got a kick out of the failure of the Voice campaign and the increasing racism that exists in Australia. So, the crowd was very much standing in solidarity with Aboriginal people”.
“I think part of it is just that it’s so blatant… it’s Trumpian politics and far right politics just on display,” added Park.
When asked about the possibility of future protests by students, Park reinforced that “there will be continued protests and campaigns”.
Lappin added, “one of the reasons why the protest was directed towards high school and university students, because we believe that students can play a very serious and important role in fighting the far right”.
Photography by Elaine Tsai.
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