Australian Students Walk Out in Second National Protest

Thousands of Australian students walk out of classrooms across the country on Thursday, September 17, skipping class for a second nationwide protest against Pauline Hanson and the One Nation party. The coordinated walkouts filled streets in every major city and several regional centres, with high school and university students marching together under the banner of a "Students Say No To Hanson" campaign. Organizers say the action was sparked by One Nation's push to slash immigration and dramatically cut the number of international students allowed into Australia.

In Sydney, more than a thousand people gathered for a march from Hyde Park to Sydney Town Hall, carrying a giant papier-mâché head of Hanson and hand-painted placards reading "Highschoolers against Hanson." Chants rolled through the crowd as students still in school uniform held their signs high. According to AAP News, the Sydney rally was one of the largest of the day, with similar actions unfolding in Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide, Hobart and regional centres including Newcastle.

What triggered the walkout

The immediate trigger was One Nation's migration policy, which promises to lower immigrant numbers by hundreds of thousands and hit international students hardest. The party plans to reduce temporary visa holders and overstayers by more than 750,000 over three years, cut international student visa grants from more than 290,000 a year to 115,000, and scrap secondary visas for family members, according to AAP News.

That landed hard on campuses. Protest organiser Yasmine Johnson, a 26-year-old student at the University of Technology Sydney, told AAP the policy left many students frightened about what university life would look like. She described international students as some of the first people Hanson was coming for, warning that the cuts would change campus life completely. For students who live alongside migrants and international classmates every day, the policy felt personal, and they wanted to defend the future they see around them.

It is a message that cuts across age groups. High schoolers marched in uniform next to university students, and the crowd skewed young enough that many attendees are still too young to vote. But the vote is coming, and the students know it.

A movement that keeps growing

Thursday was not the first time students left class over this. A similar national walkout took place on August 13, and organizers say turnout keeps climbing. Organizers note this is the second nationwide action in five weeks in which Australian students walk out over Hanson's politics. According to Green Left, rallies on September 17 took place in 18 cities and towns, from Sydney and Melbourne to Newcastle, Adelaide and Hobart.

The students brought a long list of grievances. Many pointed to Hanson's record of comments about First Nations people and immigrants, her stance against LGBTIQ rights, her claim that domestic violence is a "two-way street," and her denial of the climate crisis. Students told reporters they had turned up to stand with women, immigrants, Palestinians, Indigenous people and queer people, and to push back against a vision of Australia built around a single culture. One Brisbane marcher carried a sign reading "Hanson is a primitive species," a jab at Hanson's qualified apology for once describing Indigenous Australians as "the most primitive race on Earth," according to AAP News.

Hanson's rise in the polls has given the student movement a sharper edge. A recent Roy Morgan poll put One Nation at 24 percent, just 3.5 points behind Labor and half a point ahead of the Liberal National Coalition, according to the protest's event page. The numbers suggest a party once treated as a fringe is now a genuine force, which is exactly what the students say worries them.

The Australian walkouts are part of a bigger global pattern of students using walkouts to make political points. This week alone, thousands of California students staged a statewide walkout against immigration enforcement, showing that walking out of class has become one of Gen Z's favorite political tools.

Whether the protests shift policy remains an open question. But the students are not treating September 17 as a one-off. Organizers have already flagged further actions, including a speak-out against racism in Sydney's Glebe suburb on September 26, and the August-to-September rhythm of the rallies suggests the campaign is only picking up speed. Each time Australian students walk out in these numbers, the message gets harder for politicians to ignore. For more student-led campaigns around the world, see more youth activists coverage.