One Nation voters have turned on Pauline Hanson after photos and video emerged of her wearing a bandana in a visit to a Sikh temple in Perth.
The Queensland senator made the trip with One Nation candidate Parminder Singh and Western Australia state leader Rod Caddies last month, and made a speech where she said it was her first time visiting a Sikh temple and denied that she was racist.
Photos from the visit showed her and her team posing barefoot in Sikh garb, lining up for food at the temple kitchen, and talking to bearded men in turbans.
Right-wing Australians reacted with surprise, calling the visit “disappointing” and a “mistake”, while an irate X user said “the entire Australian right is a complete joke”.
A video has surfaced of Pauline Hanson giving a speech at a Sikh temple in WA.
“You may think that I’m a racist person, but that’s being pushed by the media when I first got into politics because I questioned and I called for equality. They didn’t like what I stood for. I… pic.twitter.com/ikoIyAT2C6
— auspill (@aus_pill) December 6, 2024
“Unrecognisable from the 90s. We’ve gone from ‘abolish multiculturalism’ to ‘Gurpreet is just as Australian as you and me’,” said one man on social media.
“Big mistake by Pauline. All Sikhs want is to emesh their beliefs into Australian society. Honestly Pauline’s political instincts should see sharper. In all her time in politics she hasn’t grown in the role,” said another.
“I’m gutted that Pauline Hanson is playing dress-up to a foreign and alien religion,” said a third.
“Australians should NEVER defer to foreign forces inside our country. To play dress-up is not showing respect but an act of absolute submission.”
Another simply wrote: “The most far-right Australian politician”.
Mr Caddies responded to one of the posts on X by accusing Ms Hanson’s critics of “stirring up drama” on social media.
“None of us would wear scarves on our heads outside the temple area. When you’re invited into a specific space, it’s simply a matter of showing respect for the hosts and their traditions – just like if you’re invited to someone’s home and they ask you to remove your shoes,” he said.
“Yeah I’m not falling for that ‘show some respect’ shit anymore, they came to our country and have no right to enforce anything anywhere,” someone else responded.
“It’s a terrible look. Indians have shown time and again the contempt they hold for Australians. Stop pandering to them like every other party cause they’ll never vote for you,” said another.
Ms Hanson’s temple visit follows years of similar pandering from the major political parties, with Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton regularly donning Sikh bandanas and turbans in an attempt to win the Sikh vote.
Members of the Victorian Liberal Party also visited Sikh temples in Melbourne in recent weeks after speaking out against the renaming without community consultation of Berwick Springs Lake in Melbourne to Guru Nanak Lake after the founder of Sikhism.
Header image: Pauline Hanson, left, right (Facebook)
