Penny Wong launches blistering attack on Pauline Hanson over her vision for Australia: 'Seeks to divide for clicks and votes'

By MAISY RAE - NEWS REPORTER and NICHOLAS COMINO, POLITICAL REPORTER, AUSTRALIA Published: 05:01, 14 August 2026 | Updated: 05:04, 14 August 2026 Penny Wong has slammed Pauline Hanson in a wide-ranging speech on Friday, describing the One Nation leader's call for a monoculture as a 'melancholic fantasy' that would harm Australia's national security. In a reference to Hanson's proposal for Australia to become monocultural, the Foreign Affairs Minister said any such idea could significantly damage Australia's social fabric. 'The call for a monoculture is a call for Australia to curtail our choices and cut off our connections,' Wong said during a speech at the Lowy Institute on Friday. 'To look inwards, to have no friends to work with, no partners to trade with, no opportunities to grow from. To be lonely in a dangerous world. 'Division makes us easier to exploit, it doesn't make us stronger. Turning Australians against each other is the opposite of patriotism.' Wong also said anyone who 'seeks to divide for clicks and votes' should know that they make Australia weaker at home and abroad.  'But well before we could ever realise this melancholic fantasy of monoculture, there is a lot of damage that can be done,' she said. 'Because Australians would be turned against each other. Australia would be a more hostile place. Harder to be family, harder to be a friend, colleague or neighbour.' Foreign Affairs Minister Penny Wong spoke at the Lowy Institute on Friday afternoon  She said Pauline's Hanson's comments at the National Press Club in June could harm Australia's national security It comes after Hanson doubled down on her comments at the National Press Club in June. 'We cannot be a multicultural society. We are a multiracial society, but we must be monocultural. Australians must live under the one cultural umbrella,' Hanson said in the address. A week later, Hanson said Australians 'must never be afraid to debate any issue' and should be willing to 'challenge long-held assumptions'. 'You'd be forgiven for thinking I had slaughtered a sacred cow at the National Press Club last week... It's exactly what I intended,' she said at the time. Wong's comments come weeks after Anthony Albanese spent much of his speech at the Labor Party conference referencing One Nation. 'All those attention-seeking culture wars imported from overseas, all those trips around the world to talk Australia down, cannot disguise the fact that none of them have anything new or anything positive to offer our country,' he said. 'People's genuine frustrations deserve a practical response, not just an emotional one because a list of problems only counts for something if it comes with solutions. 'You can go a long way in politics for a long time by raging against a system that you're a part of without a plan to fix it.'