One Nation's undercover stunt at student protests

Today's podcast is brought to you by Finder. Ready? And good morning. This is the daily hours. Oh, now it makes sense. Good morning and welcome to the daily hours. It's Monday, the 17th of August. I'm Billy Fitzsiamonds. I'm Elliott Laurie. Last Thursday, thousands of students across the country walked out of the classroom to protest the rise of one nation. Videos of the protests went all over social media. But one in particular has raised some questions. And that was from one nation themselves because they actually went undercover at the protests. I'm at the student protest against pooling handsom. Let's hear what they have to say. Do you guys, what would you do if pooling handsom? I should have to fill in a f*** up. Fill in a f*** up. Now we had some questions about that video. Like, is it legal to deceive people into being filmed? But also, are those death threats legal? We'll explore it all in today's episode. Okay, Billy, we've covered pooling handsom and one nation many, many times on this pod and on the feed. But I think a good place to start is to just have a think about who they are. So do you want to just give us a quick rundown? Yes. So one nation was founded by pooling handson. It is a right-wing party. I'll quickly explain pooling handson first, I think. So she is a Queensland senator now. She actually first entered politics back in 1996 as an independent member in the House of Representatives. 30 years. That's crazy that it was 30 years ago. So long ago. She actually lost that seat in the House. I think it was a couple of years after she got it. She was out of politics for a bit, but she re-entered politics as a senator in 2016 where she has been since. Now, she is the founder of one nation which is the party we're talking about today. Quick 101 on one nation. It is a political party and their platform really centers on reducing immigration or significantly reducing immigration, I should say. At her National Press Club address this year, if you're not familiar with National Press Club addresses, they're just a quite a significant thing to happen. They happen in Canberra and lots of important people go to them. It was the first time that she had done one earlier this year. Which is notable. And I think the reason that she got asked to do it this year is because she's received a lot more attention than in the past 10, 20, 30 years. Yes. She's received a lot more attention because the poll suggests that she is a lot more popular with the Australian public than she has ever been before. So, yes, she did this National Press Club for the first time this year and she used that speech to call for a monocultural Australia, saying that immigration has driven Australia into a state of crisis. Those are the words that she used. Another thing to know about one nation is their website says that they are the only political party to question climate science. So, that tells you a bit about their policies that they are campaigning on and trying to win a lot of seats not just at the federal election, which is still about two years away, but also their popping up at state elections. And we have one in Victoria, so in truth. Yes, very, very importantly. Yes, it will be interesting to see what happens there. And we've already spoken about it, but like I said, the reason they're getting so much attention from the media is because poll after poll, we are seeing that they are more popular with Australians than ever. A lot of those polls suggest that if there was an election held today, they would win many, many more seats than they did at the last election. Well, at the last election in the House of Representatives, they actually won none. Yes. But they have won now. They now have Barnaby Joyce because he left the Liberal Party and is now part of the One Nation. That gives you a bit of an overview. And that is why the students are protesting. They are protesting the rise of One Nation. Yes. And on the point of that national press club speech that was about immigration mainly, Sam and I actually did a podcast where we went through the sort of state of immigration in Australia and the different policies of the different parties. I think it's definitely worth going and having. I'll listen to if you want more context on that. But as you just said, that kind of rhetoric from One Nation around immigration was a big reason why these protests were happening. So maybe let's go to them now. What happened with those protests? So there were rallies planned across most capital cities in the country, as well as in Wollongong and Newcastle. So they were widespread across the country on Thursday. They were both high school and university students literally walking out of their class on Thursday to go to these protests. It was organised by a group called the High School Anti-Capitalists who worked with the National Union of Students, which is the peak representative body for tertiary students in Australia. So a mixture of university students and high school students with these sort of different organisations supporting them? Yes. And the organisers said that the purpose was to quote, "build the anti-handsome movement to a scale that can contest the far right dominance." That quote that you just heard there was actually from a document that one of the organisers put out to kind of give more information to people about how to do the walkout. And interestingly, in there when I was reading through it, they highlighted that they were inspired by very similar protests almost 30 years ago. So in 1998, roughly 10,000 secondary school students actually did very similar protests against Paul Inhampton and One Nation. They were called the not too young to protest racism protests. And she was only two years into the job at this time but obviously still maintaining a lot of the policy positions that she has now. And actually, people in our comments section when we posted this story about the protests were tagging their friends in it saying, "Oh my God, we went to this together 27, 28 years ago," which is a crazy thought that the same actions are happening in 2026 that were happening in 1998 against the same politician and the same party. Yeah, it's crazy how cyclical. Is that how you say it? Cyclical. I think that's the word, yes. Everything is, and politics, it just all moves in circles kind of. I will add that prior to the protests, obviously Paul Inhampton criticised them or One Nation. I know Barnaby Joyce had some words about them to say prior to the protests, but also the education minister Jason Claire, so he's from Labour. He also was against them. He told students not to partake in them. He said that they should be in the classroom. His exact quote in a press conference the day before was, "I get it that people don't like One Nation. I don't like One Nation either." However, he went on to say, "I want you at school when school is on learning." Yes. So I do think that's important to add as well. That across the political aisle, they weren't encouraging these students to do this. No, well, the Greens were, I remember seeing Maureen Farouk posted a video where she pretended to sign a permission slip for all the students to get out of school. But the Labour Party, the Labour Party, One Nation, they were all kind of against this action happening on this day. In particular. So that was on Thursday. We then came into the office on Friday, and we'd seen a piece in the Guardian that said that One Nation staffer was posing as a left-wing content creator at these protests. Do you want to run us through what happened there? Yes. So we saw the article in the Guardian, and then we went and had a look at the video that the official One Nation page on Instagram, and also the official polling hats in page had posted. And they said in plain sight, it was the first thing they said in the caption that we were there undercover. So their caption read in part, One Nation went undercover again to another protest. I think before we discuss the video, let's just play a little bit of it now. Aston, do you believe that Paul Linn Hansen is a fascist? Oh, what a hunter's eye. What do you think the punishment for that fascism should be? I'll bring my ability, I think. I do want to say, obviously, the language used at the start was quite intense, I think it's fair to say, but there were other media there, and they posted videos to social media, and it did not have that same tone. There were students who were speaking quite calmly about the reasons why they were protesting. So I don't think that that video is representative of how everyone was talking there from what I've seen. It annoys me that the Daily Oz wasn't there. It was on Thursday, and we just had such a. We have so many people away at the moment. I know. But. Less holidays, we need you here on the ground that everyone was on leave. But usually we would try to go to stuff like that because it is important. It's our audience, young people. So we unfortunately weren't there, but there were. were a number of other media outlets who were there, ABC, I saw cheek media was there. And again, those videos that I saw did not have the same tone that we just heard in that video. Now back to the article that we saw in the Guardian, they said that toilet paper Australia, which is a political meme page on Instagram. They called themselves the ship posting page. A ship posting page. Perfect. So the Guardian said that they had previously heard that certain people from one nation were posing as them at different protests. This is in months prior to the one that we're talking about and that there is precedent for them going undercover at these protests. And Elliot, you actually spoke to the founder of the Instagram page. Yes. Yeah. And then they're speaking to a restaurant from toilet paper on the phone. I was really curious and know why they thought that one nation would be pretending to be them. And maybe we should just play a little bit of that interview because I think it's better from his words. I think they just saw it as an all areas like access pass to get undercover protests because we're relatively well known. We're not too serious and we're not the most visible group. We all have gay jobs outside of politics. And I think because we don't have a recognizable face, maybe that's what they've gone after. Just to put a little bit more context on that, what he told me was that they first found out about this issue because they had dms from people that follow them saying, so great to finally meet you guys. Can't wait to see the video. And they thought we haven't been out filming any videos, not in Brisbane or Melbourne where they were preparedly interviewing people. And then they saw one, they supposedly sort of undercover videos and they went back to the people and said, was this the person that interviewed you and the answer was yes? Yeah. All right. I want to get to the legal questions around this because this is where my mind went to when I saw these videos. But first we are going to hear a quick message from today's sponsor. I've been meaning to switch mobile plans for months and turns out, find over rewards you with free digital visa gift cards for switches on eligible products in mobile plans, broadband, home loans, personal loans, share trading platforms and more exclusive to finder. And if the new providers already got a deal running, the finder award stacks on top. Get rewarded at finder.com.au/rewards TNC's apply eligible products only. All right. So as we've spoken about, we saw this unfolding on social media, these videos from one nation and we had some legal questions about how they came about. So you reached out to some lawyers, right? Yes. So I had two main questions for lawyers. The first was, is it legal for someone to be filmed if they were deceived about the purpose of the filming? And second of all, many of the students who we just heard from would have been under 18 and I wanted to know if there was any added layer of legal complexity. Yeah, parental permission slip. Yes. So I spoke to Jake Blondell, who is a partner at Banky Haddock for your lawyers. And his quote is super interesting. It's a bit long, but bear with me an Elliot Jumping if you have any questions. So he told me, although it may seem inappropriate for a political party to target children, there is no legal prohibition in Australia on filming any person, including a child in a public place and engaged in a public activity and then posting it online. He went on, it is unlawful in New South Wales and other Australian jurisdictions. Sorry, for context, this is not me, Billy, speaking not the lawyer. The reason why we're focused on New South Wales is because that is where this video that one nation posted was taken. Correct. So it is unlawful in New South Wales and other Australian jurisdictions to record without consent a person's private conversation or where they are engaged in a private act or where the use of recordings is exploitative, none of which appear to apply here. Exploitedive though, that that word does stand out to me. Yes. I guess because in that context, he's talking about a private conversation or private act and that is not what this was. It was a very public protest. However, this next bit, I think, is really interesting. So he said, if the maker had misrepresented the purpose of the recording to the subject and solicited a specific response from them that was then criticised or selectively edited in that post, that could, depending on the circumstances, potentially be considered to be defamatory. So that is the only potential legal thing here. Definition lawsuit coming from these students. Well, it's such an interesting question, right? I mean, we don't know these students, but it's just such an interesting legal space about what is your right to being recorded in public. And obviously, they would have, I presume, I don't know anything, but I presume that they did have consent for recording. It seems like these students did know that they were being recorded, but they didn't know what they were being recorded for or how it would be used. But the other question that we had that is really important about these videos is that on the other side of this, in the videos that we heard from earlier, the students do make death threats to pulling Hanson. And that is something that police need to take seriously. And there is so much precedent, not just in New South Wales, but in Australia, of where death threats are made and police do take them really seriously. I mean, now, police are taking them really seriously when they're made online as well. There are many cases of a death threat being made online and police following up and finding out who that person, in some cases, they thought that they were anonymous and it turns out that they weren't. I'm going on a bit of a tangent, but I do think that that is something that we need to look at here as well if we are asking questions about these videos, legal questions about these videos. So, Elliot, you reached out to New South Wales police to understand the answer to that question. And in relation to this specific example that we're talking about today, this protest in Sydney, they said that there were no reported incidents that they were investigating at this point in time. They also-- New South Wales police. They also pointed me to the Crimes Act, which does say that it is illegal to make death threats now, whether that means that police are investigating and arresting every single person that makes a death threat, I'd say no, because they're probably made in a flippant manner all the time. But like you said, they can have really real world consequences, especially when they're then converted to social media. I'm thinking of, do you remember a couple of years ago, this was in the US, but it's a similar example. Kathy Griffin got in a lot of hot water over this. No. So, she posted a photo to Instagram where she was holding a mask of Donald Trump and she had put ketchup on it and she basically got put on the no fly list for years because they were being in the authorities in the US, perceived that to be a death threat. That was extremely serious. Ah, Kathy Griffin. I was like, who is Kathy Griffin? Are you talking about the comedian? Yes. And that was a whole other debate about creative expression and satire and stuff, but that's not this podcast. This is here in Australia, death threats. Yes. Well, I guess before we go, it will be interesting to see if this is something that one nation keeps doing because like we said, it seems like they have done this before, but it's the first time that it's gained this kind of media attention. Yeah, exactly. I mean, when I was watching that video, I thought this is something that happens all the time. And you know, I always see videos of people going to rallies and almost trying to trip people up with making them look silly by asking them leading questions, but this is kind of the first time that I've seen it done by a political party and by a politician to the scale. Yeah. Fascinating. All right. A shift in tone, a very quick tip bit because producer Aula is telling us to wrap things up. So Elliot, take us away. You've got the tip bit today. I do. So this story, I'm going to call it gluten gate. It is about online creator, so for Dofa and Sydney Airport, they've been having a bit of ongoing beef back and forth and it's been absolutely a major point of discussion in the office. So to take you back, it first started a couple of months ago when so for Dofa, who you're familiar with? I am familiar with. She's got millions of followers. She's one of the biggest creators in Australia. She posted a TikTok at Sydney Airport saying, I can't find anything to eat. That is gluten free. She doesn't eat gluten and she was going up to some of the vendors and asking them and they were saying, no, we don't have anything to eat. Now you might be thinking that's not anything to write home about. The reason it then escalated a little bit was Sydney Airport took that sound and then posted a response TikTok saying, hey, so for Dofa, hope this helps and they listed seven places at their terminals where you could find gluten free options. And that did not go down too well. Well because their response, they were talking about sushi, which we're just going to ignore how I pronounce sushi. But they had things that are lunch or dinner foods, and so for Dofa was talking about breakfast. - Yes. - And so it just caused even more back and forth and messiness. - Yes, and we had a whole conversation in the office about should we cover this? 'Cause it seems like a lot of people care about it, and we eventually landed on, yes, it's crossed the threshold, we will write about it. And when we post it to Instagram about this, it went off. Like there was so many people that had such strong feelings about this, and I do kind of get it. I'm vegetarian, and when I'm in the airport, especially overseas when you have a layover, it can be really hard to find food. And sometimes that does lead to you being extremely hungry on these long haul flights. With people that are gluten free, it can be even more serious than that, right? Because a lot of the times they can end up being sick or if you're celiac, it can even kill you. - Yeah. - You've missed the key part of the story, which is that you've reached out to Sydney Airport, and they responded to us, and I'm gonna read it out since you're not going to. They said, "We recognize that some people felt that our recent post missed the mark, so that is their response to so for DoFar, where we said that they used her audio and it kind of went through all of these gluten free options, which people took issue with." But what I found interesting is that they said that they're speaking to their retail partners to make it easier for passengers to find the information they need. So it looks like they actually are taking action from this. - Yes, no, they're taking it super seriously. Like it started as, you know, like a bit of a silly back and forth on social media, where people were thinking, "How can you have beef with an airport?" But she's actually affected real change. - She has. - Yeah, so congrats to so far. - Yeah, that is all we have time for quite literally today. We have maxed this podcast out. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of The Daily Oz. We'll be back later today with the evening headlines, but until then we hope you have a great day. (upbeat music) - My name is Lily Madden, and I'm a proud Arranda Bunjelang Calcutune woman from Gadigal Country. The Daily Oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present. - You know the adult admin you keep meaning to do, like switching broadband providers and sorting insurance? Well, thanks to Finder, they'll give you free digital visa gift cards for eligible switches on mobile plans, broadband, home loans, personal loans, and share trading platforms. These offers are exclusive to Finder, and if your new provider's already running a signup deal, you get to keep that too. They've paid out over $2 million in rewards to members so far, signing up is free to join and takes minutes. 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