Summary:
Australian high school and university students are being organised to walk out of class on 13 August in a coordinated series of protests against Pauline Hanson and her right-wing populist party, One Nation. The campaign, titled “Students Say No to Hanson,” is led by the National Union of Students Education Officer, a member of the revolutionary socialist group Socialist Alternative, working with a network of campus socialist organisations and a high-school activist collective. Organisers have issued a walkout guide that instructs students on recruiting classmates, including the creation of group chats, the placement of posters inside schools, and suggested arguments for persuading peers to participate. The action comes as One Nation records its strongest national support in decades, fuelled in part by public concern over elevated migration levels under the current Labor government. The planned walk out continues the trend of organised political groups attempting to normalise the use of school walkouts as a tool of activism.
Detailed Report
1. School Walkout Framed as Resistance to Far-Right Politics
Students across Australia have been called to leave their classrooms on 13 August for a national day of action against Pauline Hanson and One Nation. The campaign frames Hanson as a ‘far-right threat’ whose growing influence must be confronted. It is not a spontaneous expression of student opinion. It is a planned political operation directed by adult activists using campus and high-school networks to draw school-aged participants into public protest. Organisers have explicitly linked the action to the high-school walkouts against One Nation that took place in 1998, presenting the current campaign as a continuation of that earlier resistance.
2. Revolutionary Marxists and Campus Network Behind the Campaign
The public face of the walkout is Yasmine Johnson, Education Officer of the National Union of Students and a member of Socialist Alternative. Socialist Alternative is Australia’s largest revolutionary Marxist organisation. It operates on the basis of classical Marxist politics, prioritising class struggle, opposition to capitalism, and organised confrontation with what it regards as the far right. The group maintains a disciplined presence across major university campuses, publishes the newspaper Red Flag, and regularly trains members in protest organising and political education.
Working alongside Johnson is High School Anti-Capitalists, a more recent collective that targets secondary students. Supporting the action are Socialist Alternative campus branches and Students for Palestine groups at multiple universities, together with student representative bodies including the University of Sydney Students’ Representative Council (SRC). The same network has previously organised campus encampments in support of Palestine, high-profile protests against Israeli-linked institutions, and earlier actions targeting One Nation and other right-wing figures. High School Anti-Capitalists distributed a walkout guide that provides practical instructions on how to recruit classmates, including the creation of group chats, the placement of posters inside schools, and suggested arguments for persuading peers to participate. The guide also cites One Nation’s rising poll numbers as justification for urgent action.
3. Organisers Defend Walkout as Hanson and Critics Push Back
Organisers present the campaign as a necessary defence against racism and the far right. Jules Arpula, a Melbourne high-school student involved in the organisation, stated: “We’re walking out of high schools and universities across the country to protest Hanson’s far-right, sexist, racist, anti-worker politics. We’re appalled by her meteoric rise, her normalisation by the mainstream, and we feel a responsibility as students to protest like the students did in 1998.”
Pauline Hanson, speaking on radio, said: “I blame the educational system and the teachers… Teachers that are so left-leaning, so full of hate, have been teaching about One Nation for years, that we are racist, and they’re being negative in their attitudes towards myself and the party.” Cory Bernardi, One Nation’s South Australian leader, claimed that students taking part “hate Australia.”
Liberal Senator Alex Antic focused on the role of adults. He asked: “Why are kids protesting things that they don't really – I think – have a proper grasp of? And why are they being encouraged to do it by adults? Kids need to be in schools. I think that's a very easy starting point.” Antic described the pattern of student protests as consistently directed toward left-wing causes and called it “a very worrying trend for the state of the political minds of our kids.”
4. One Nation’s Rise and the Politics of Immigration
One Nation is a right-wing populist party founded by Pauline Hanson after she was disendorsed by the Liberal Party in 1996. Its enduring positions include sharp reductions in immigration, rejection of official multiculturalism in favour of assimilation, prioritisation of Australian citizens in housing and welfare, opposition to race-based policies, and resistance to climate measures it argues increase energy costs. In 2026 the party has achieved its highest sustained national primary vote. A Roy Morgan poll in early August placed it on 26 per cent, ahead of both Labor and the Coalition. Earlier polls in the same year recorded support in the high 20s to low 30s in some surveys.
5. Net Migration Exceeds 1.4 Million Under Albanese Government
The immigration debate that has accompanied One Nation’s rise is grounded in official statistics. Net overseas migration reached a record 538,000 in 2022–23 after borders reopened, fell to 429,000 the following year, and stood at approximately 301,000 in the 2025 calendar year. Since the Albanese government took office in mid-2022, cumulative net migration has exceeded 1.4 million people—more than 1,100 net arrivals per day on average. This is substantially higher than the pre-COVID annual range of roughly 180,000 to 260,000.
Migration has accounted for the large majority of Australia’s recent population growth. While the permanent migration program has been held at 185,000 places, the net figure has been driven largely by temporary visa holders remaining longer or transitioning to permanent status. The government maintains that numbers are declining from their peak and has set a longer-term objective of lower intakes. One Nation has called for a permanent annual cap in the region of 130,000 and broader reductions across the migration system. These numbers form the practical backdrop against which the party’s message has gained traction.
6. Organised Left Has Normalised School Strikes for Activism
The current campaign deliberately recalls the high-school walkouts against One Nation organised by the socialist youth group Resistance in 1998. Those earlier actions drew several thousand students in cities across the country.
More recently, school walk outs have been used for climate change activism. The climate strikes of 2018–2024 involved far larger numbers and normalised the idea of students leaving class for political causes, including primary-school children in some cases. The 13 August action sits within this longer pattern of left-organised student mobilisation, now directed once again at Pauline Hanson and her party.
Conclusion
The 13 August walkout is a deliberate political operation by Australia’s main revolutionary socialist organisation and its campus allies. It seeks to mobilise school students against a right-wing populist party that is currently recording historic levels of support. The campaign reveals both the methods of organised left activism in Australian schools and universities and the depth of the political realignment underway as voters respond to sustained high migration and its consequences.