South Australian One Nation MP Sarah Game says she is making a massive effort to change her party’s “racist” image after being shunned at public events.
Ms Game, 41, made the comments in an interview with The Advertiser where she revealed that her husband left her two weeks after the birth of their third child, and that her Navy dentist father committed suicide last year.
She was working as a vet when she was added to the One Nation ticket at the last minute in 2022 when her mother pulled out, and said she didn’t campaign and didn’t want to win, but since then has made headlines for her opposition to gender fluidity in schools and drag queen story hour events in Adelaide.
Party leader and founder Pauline Hanson said earlier this year that she was right to warn in the 1990s that Australia was being “swamped” by Asians in light of recent immigration statistics, but Ms Game said she has been trying to combat the idea that One Nation is “racist”.
“One of the challenges is people saying, ‘Oh, you know is that the racist party’,” she said.
“I think we’re coming away from that and getting known for lots of other things now. I would never hold myself in that way and I’ve made a massive effort I think to try and break down that impression.”
She said there were people who were instantly hostile to her due to the party’s image, and that some people even refused to be in photos with her at a school performance.
“It does affect you when you do meet the odd person who’s decided that they’re going to not like you. Pauline would tell me to toughen up,” she said.
Ms Game has also gone her own way on other issues, earlier this year asking the South Australian premier to light up city monuments in Palestinian colours, despite having Jewish ancestry on her father’s side and Ms Hanson being an outspoken supporter of Israel and famously wearing an Israeli flag scarf in the senate.
In March Ms Hanson called for a halt to immigration, pointing to repeated polls showing that most Australians want it lowered, and pointing out that her past warnings have proved accurate despite being labelled “racist” at the time.
“Here’s what I said in my maiden speech as the Member for Oxley: ‘Immigration must be halted in the short term so that our dole queues are not added to by, in many cases, unskilled migrants not fluent in the English language’,” she said.
“I also warned we were in danger of being swamped by immigration from Asia. I was called a racist, of course, by the major parties and big media who are in lockstep on a big Australia.
“But today, seven out of the top 10 source countries for immigration to Australia are in Asia – including four out of the top five – and the numbers are out of control.
“I was right, of course.”
