Pauline Hanson has used an interview with the far-right British activist Tommy Robinson to blame the end of the White Australia policy for creating what she sees as problems with migration and said her daughter, Lee Hanson, was the future of One Nation.
The One Nation leader, who is visiting the UK for a series of conference appearances and a holiday with her billionaire benefactor Gina Rinehart, appeared on an episode of Robinson’s podcast on Friday, repeating unsubstantiated claims about the spread of sharia law and accusing Muslim communities, without evidence, of rorting the national disability insurance scheme.
“A lot of them are ripping the system off who are a lot from the Muslim areas and they’re getting on the scheme,” she said of the national disability insurance scheme.
“But there’s a lot of Aussies too, other Aussies, so I’m not just going to pick them out, but it is quite known that in the Muslim streets you’ve got a quite a lot in that street who are on the NDIS scheme.”
The health minister, Mark Butler, rejected Hanson’s claims about Muslim communities and the NDIS on Friday morning.
“I’m not sure where Ms Hanson is getting her figures from but they’ve never been provided to me as the minister for disability and the minister for the NDIS,” he told ABC radio.
“I’m loath to respond to a podcast between Ms Hanson and this convicted criminal, who frankly has been disowned by so many leading figures on the right.”
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailRobinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, has a string of criminal convictions and has become too politically toxic for mainstream figures in Britain, including the Reform UK leader, Nigel Farage.
Hanson used the hour-long interview to blame the Whitlam government for changing Australia’s immigration mix in the 1970s. As prime minister Gough Whitlam removed the final vestiges of the racist White Australia policy but the Holt government started dismantling the post-federation policy favouring white migrants as early as the 1960s.
On the podcast, Robinson singled out particular migrant groups and asks Hanson about the “changing face of Australia due to Islamic immigration … how have you ended up with Pakistanis, Somalis, all of these African problems … how has that happened?”
Hanson replied: “They opened up and got rid of the White Australian policy then they started bringing in the different migrants.
“We had a lot of people come out after the second world war. Italians, Germans, Polish, and these people, but they integrated into the system.
“A lot of them couldn’t speak English but they learned to speak English. They had to work. These people who came in and really assimilated.”
She also talked up her daughter as the future of her party, saying she had the right background and experience for a career in politics.
Guardian Australia revealed in February that One Nation has employed the Tasmania-based Lee Hanson as a senior adviser to a New South Wales senator, in a taxpayer-funded role worth as much as $180,000 a year.
She has been spearheading the party’s expansion in Tasmania and is also the party’s national executive manager. The younger Hanson nearly won a Senate seat at the 2025 election.
Hanson told Robinson her daughter was “a cluey kid”.
“It’s great to work with her. She’s the future. She’s got the softer approach.”
Asked if she could replace her mother as leader, Hanson said it was a position to be earned.
“She’s got the potential but I don’t believe in nepotism. And she has to prove herself. Not only to me but also to the other members and to the public, and everything like that.
“That’s something she has to earn.”’
The Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said Hanson’s interview with Robinson was out of line. “This is so appalling, and frankly, it’s un-Australian,” she said.
“To go overseas to hang out with a criminal thug … to be laughing on his show about multiculturalism back here in Australia, which are our communities, Australian citizens, and the people who make this country great, Pauline Hanson is the most un-Australian politician in the parliament, and she should come home, face the music, and apologise.”
Hanson’s visit to Britain will include a weekend address in London to the Conservative Political Action Conference, at which Farage and the former British prime minister Liz Truss will also appear.
Hanson’s chief adviser, James Ashby, has claimed that her meeting with Robinson was organised by Channel Seven, as part of a segment for its Spotlight current affairs program, set to air this Sunday.
A spokesperson for Seven told Guardian Australia in a statement that it had been granted rare access to Hanson abroad, and had paid for some production costs, but did not confirm the organisation of the meeting.
“Seven paid for some standard production costs, including a hotel room used as a set for recording interviews and security to protect the Seven staff while recording on UK streets,” the spokesperson said.
The former Today host Karl Stefanovic was pushed out of the Nine network after hosting Robinson on his own podcast last month.
