Video of Australian politician lamenting living standard figures lacks context

The leader of Australia’s far-right One Nation party criticised the country’s living standards in a June 2026 speech at the National Press Club, drawing praise from supporters who shared snippets of the remarks online. But one video circulating on social media, in which Senator Pauline Hanson laments children going to school hungry, lacks context. The percentages she mentions do not represent the entire country — they come from a sample of 4,400 people who had sought help from the Salvation Army’s emergency services.

“Thirty-five percent of parents said their children had gone to school hungry,” Hanson says in a clip posted June 18 on Facebook by conservative influencer George Mamalis.

“How can we hold our heads up? How can we as members of parliament who were supposed to represent the people of this nation allow that to happen?”

Text over the footage, which accumulated more than 2,200 shares, says: “This is leadership”.

Hanson cites other figures in the video, including 59 percent of parents saying their children had missed school because they could not afford transport costs and 84 percent saying they went to bed early to keep warm.

“Just disgraceful. And yet this Albanese Labor government cannot help our own people here but keeps bringing in more into the country and floods this country time and time and time again,” Hanson says in the clip, referencing Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his ruling Labor Party.

For years a political outsider, Hanson’s One Nation surged in 2026 to become the country’s most popular party, according to opinion polls (archived here and here).

The video shared online stems from a wide-ranging, nearly hour-long speech to Canberra’s National Press Club on June 17. Hanson assailed “radical Islam”, pledged sweeping cuts to government spending and denounced multiculturalism, calling instead for Australia to be “monocultural” and to “live under one cultural umbrella” (archived here and here).

Hanson also lambasted the Labor government for its immigration policy, which she blamed for the country’s societal woes.

Social media users on X and TikTok also shared her speech, praising Hanson and her “big heart” for pointing out the figures on food insecurity.

“This is what Australia needs — a leader who puts Australians and their needs first,” one commenter said.

However, the one-minute video omits the fact that Hanson had earlier disclosed in her speech that the figures were from the Salvation Army’s latest Red Shield report with a sample size of 4,400 people (archived link).

And what Hanson did not mention in her speech is that the people surveyed for the report were those who had sought help from the charity — a vulnerable group not representative of the entire Australian population.

According to page seven of the report published in May, those polled in October 2025 were “community members who had recently received assistance from our emergency relief services” (archived link).

A Salvation Army representative told AFP on June 26 that anyone who calls the group’s emergency hotline or comes into its centres requesting aid is eligible for services. They did not immediately offer comment on Hanson’s claims.

Government figures lower

Numbers from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show a wider snapshot of the country’s hunger situation.

The agency reported in 2025 that more than one in eight households experienced food insecurity in 2023 — the last year for which such figures are available — “due to a lack of money for food at some point in the last 12 months” (archived link).

That constitutes 13.2 percent of Australian households — far lower than the 35 percent statistic cited by Hanson.

The report says 8.5 percent of households experienced moderate or severe food insecurity. “Moderate food insecurity” was defined as at least one member of a household who had compromised on the quality or quantity of food due to lack of money.

“Severe food insecurity” refers to households that missed meals or went without food for at least a day. 

Food insecurity is inconsistently measured on a national level, according to a September 2020 paper by the Australian Institute of Family Studies (archived link).

However, it said that estimates suggest between four and 13 percent of the general population are food insecure.

AFP has previously covered other misinformation related to Australian politics here.