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Politics32 outlets ran this5 min read

Students protest across Australia against Pauline Hanson and One Nation

Thousands walked out of school in major cities to oppose One Nation policies and what they called racism

AI-assisted coverage comparison, editor-supervised · How this was made

Published Updated
Camera IconThousands of students skip school for rowdy Hanson protest Credit: Sandra Jackson

What this story says

  • Students in at least eight cities walked out of school to protest against Pauline Hanson and One Nation on 13 August 2026.
  • The largest gatherings were in Perth and Melbourne, where organisers said more than a thousand students assembled in each city.
  • Pauline Hanson responded by saying schools should teach students "how to think, not what to think" and criticised the Labor Greens government.
  • The National Union of Students helped organise the protests, which included chants and marches through city centres.

Who covered it

Left 56%(13)Centre 18%(4)Right 26%(6)

Percentages are shares of the 23 outlets carrying a published leaning rating. 9 of the 32 outlets we know ran this story carry no rating and are not counted in them. Coverage measured .

Trust

70/100

Craft

85/100

Hype

25/100

32 sources · methodology

Missing from the right

Only 6 of the 23 outlets with a published leaning rating that ran this story are rated right.

A reader who follows the right would not have seen this. We report the absence rather than explain it: outlets choose what to cover for many reasons, and we have no evidence about which one applies here.

Students across Australia walked out of school on 13 August 2026 to protest against Pauline Hanson and her One Nation party. The largest gatherings were in Perth and Melbourne, where organisers said crowds filled public squares. Protesters carried signs and chanted slogans opposing racism and far-right policies.

The protests were organised by student groups, including the National Union of Students and Students for Palestine. In Perth, an organiser who identified herself as Leila told the crowd she was protesting against capitalism, war and Hanson. In Melbourne, students marched through city streets, blocking traffic. Similar protests took place in Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Wollongong and Newcastle.

Pauline Hanson condemned the protests on social media before they began. She said students should instead protest the cost-of-living crisis and stagnant wages. "The Labor Greens government is selling out your future," she wrote. "Whether you know it or not, One Nation and I are fighting for you." Federal Education Minister Jason Clare and Victorian Premier Ben Carroll urged students not to skip school.

Where the reports disagree on crowd size in Sydney

WA Today and Brisbane Times reported that hundreds of students gathered at Sydney Town Hall. PerthNow and The Border Mail did not mention a Sydney protest. No other outlet provided a figure for Sydney.

What the coverage left out

None of the digests from the left-rated outlets mentioned the size of the Perth crowd. The right-rated digest from The West Australian did not include Hanson’s response to the protests or the planned second strike in September.

Tags:#StudentProtests#PaulineHanson#OneNation#AustraliaPolitics#NationalUnionOfStudents

Coverage settled. We checked this 12 times and stopped on 18 Aug 2026, 20:31. The figures above are what it finished at.

How other outlets pictured it

Which photograph to run is each newsroom’s own choice. The leaning beside a name is that outlet’s published rating, not a claim that the pictures divide along it. Every picture is shown from the outlet’s own server and links to the article it ran in.

High school and university students have rallied to oppose Pauline Hanson's One Nation policies. Photo: Jay Kogler/AAP PHOTOS
The Border MailLeft

How each side covered it

Our own reading of the reporting listed below, written from the outlets’ articles rather than quoted from them. The reasoning is set out on our methodology page.

Left

13 rated outlets

  • Fourteen left-rated outlets carried the story. The reports agree that students walked out of classes on 13 August 2026 in coordinated protests against Pauline Hanson and One Nation across multiple Australian cities. They also note Hanson’s response on social media, where she urged students to protest the cost-of-living crisis instead.
  • The Guardian, The Border Mail, and The Bendigo Advertiser led on the scale and energy of the protests, quoting student organisers who called Hanson’s policies racist and exclusionary. The Border Mail and The Bendigo Advertiser included chants from the rallies, such as “no hate, no fear, Hanson is not welcome here” and “unite to fight the right”. Both full reports named high school students as speakers, including Eliza Wynn and Hamish Knight, who said Hanson did not represent working-class interests.
  • The Sydney Morning Herald and ABC Australia carried organisers’ claims that 10,000 students were expected to attend. The Canberra Times and Newcastle Herald digests mentioned One Nation’s 26% primary vote. None of the digests or full reports quoted Hanson or One Nation representatives at the protests.

Centre

4 rated outlets

  • PerthNow, one of the two centre-rated reports, led with the size of the Perth crowd and the language used by protesters. It quoted an organiser saying, "I am here because I hate capitalism, I am here because I hate war, and I am here because I f***ing hate Pauline Hanson." The report also included Hanson’s response, in which she said One Nation was fighting for students’ futures.
  • The digest from WA Today reported that hundreds of students gathered at Sydney Town Hall but did not include details about other cities or Hanson’s response.

Right

6 rated outlets

  • The West Australian’s digest repeated the PerthNow report almost verbatim, including the description of the protest as "rowdy" and the chant "for Pauline Hanson to go to hell." It did not include Hanson’s response or mention protests in other cities.

Questions about this coverage

How did the left and right cover Students protest across Australia against Pauline Hanson and One Nation?
Of the 23 outlets on this story carrying a published leaning rating, 56% are rated left, 18% are rated centre, 26% are rated right. Those percentages are shares of the rated outlets, not of every outlet that ran it, which was 32. The sections above set out what each side emphasised, in its own terms.
Is Students protest across Australia against Pauline Hanson and One Nation left or right?
Neither side dominates it. Of the 23 rated outlets on this story, 56% are rated left, 18% are rated centre, 26% are rated right, and no side holds the 70% this site would want before calling a field one-sided. A story is not left or right in any case; the outlets that carried it are what carry ratings.
Is the coverage of Students protest across Australia against Pauline Hanson and One Nation biased?
Students protest across Australia against Pauline Hanson and One Nation is one event reported by 32 outlets, and this page does not rate the story as biased or unbiased. What it publishes is the spread: which outlets ran it, where named rating organisations place each of them on the spectrum, and what each side chose to lead with. A leaning rating describes an outlet's record over time, not this article, and the two should not be run together.
Which side is not reporting Students protest across Australia against Pauline Hanson and One Nation?
When we first saw this story, outlets rated right had barely covered it. Coverage accretes for hours after an event, so that is where to look rather than a verdict — the split above is the current count, and it is the one to read.
Which outlets covered Students protest across Australia against Pauline Hanson and One Nation?
32 that we know of, every one of them listed further up this page with a link to its own report and to what we hold on the publisher. Nothing here is a summary of somebody else's summary: the outlets are named so the original reporting can be read.
How many students protested against Pauline Hanson?
Organisers said more than a thousand students gathered in Perth and about 1,300 in Melbourne. Smaller protests took place in at least six other cities, including Sydney, where hundreds were reported. The exact number of participants across Australia is unclear.
What did Pauline Hanson say about the protests?
Pauline Hanson condemned the protests on social media, saying students should protest the cost-of-living crisis instead. She also said schools should teach "how to think, not what to think" and claimed One Nation was fighting for students’ futures.
Which cities saw student protests against One Nation?
Protests took place in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Wollongong and Newcastle. The largest gatherings were in Perth and Melbourne, where organisers said more than a thousand students assembled in each city.

Read it at the source

37 outlets, grouped by the leaning a published rating gives them. Every headline links to the original; an underlined outlet name opens our profile of that publisher.

Left

15
Show 7 more

Centre

6

Right

7

Not rated

9
Show 1 more

How did this read?

About the coverage, not about the story. We do not ask whether you agree with what happened — we have no honest use for that answer.

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Australia students protest Pauline Hanson and One Nation | MediaBias News