Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi has thrown her support behind school students walking out of class to protest Pauline Hanson and One Nation, appearing in a social media video in which she signs a symbolic “permission slip” encouraging young people to join the nationwide demonstrations.
The stunt added another layer of political controversy to the “Students Say No to Hanson” demonstrations held across Australia on Thursday, with high school and university students gathering in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Canberra, Adelaide, Perth, Wollongong and Newcastle.
In the video, Faruqi framed the decision as one for students alarmed by the increasing influence of One Nation and what she described as the rise of the far right.
She accused Hanson’s party of wanting to wind back women’s rights, workers’ rights and environmental protections, while describing its politics as racist, sexist, anti-worker and divisive.
Then came the punchline.
Faruqi granted her “permission”, told the students she hoped they had made a big sign and wished them fun at the protest.
It was unmistakably political theatre.
It was also an intervention by a federal senator encouraging school-age Australians to participate in a political demonstration during class time — something that has drawn criticism well beyond One Nation.
The permission slip was symbolic, not an actual authority to leave school.
That distinction is important.
Faruqi is a federal senator and deputy leader of the Australian Greens. She has no authority to excuse a secondary student’s absence from school merely by signing a piece of paper or appearing in a social media video.
Attendance requirements are governed through state and territory education systems, school policies and parental responsibilities.
The video was therefore an endorsement of the walkout, not a legal mechanism allowing students to bypass those rules.
But politically, that hardly made the gesture less provocative.
Faruqi was putting the authority and profile of a federal parliamentarian behind a protest deliberately scheduled so that some students would leave their classrooms.
The Greens senator made no attempt to disguise her support.
For Faruqi, the political stakes justified student action.
For critics, encouraging children to miss school for a partisan protest crossed a line.
That disagreement has spread across Australian politics.
Hanson has strongly criticised the walkout and rejected the accusations directed at her party.
She has argued that schools should teach children how to think rather than what to think and has suggested students would be better served focusing on their education and the economic problems they will inherit.
The One Nation leader has also accused left-wing political organisations of influencing young people and using school students to advance an ideological campaign.
But criticism of missing class has not come exclusively from One Nation.
Federal Education Minister Jason Clare defended students’ democratic right to protest while saying they should do it on a weekend rather than skip school.
Victorian political leaders similarly urged pupils to remain in class.
That creates a revealing divide between Labor and the Greens.
Both parties contain politicians deeply critical of Hanson and One Nation, but Faruqi has gone considerably further by explicitly encouraging the walkout itself.
The dispute is therefore not simply between people who support Hanson and those who oppose her.
It is also about whether political activism provides a sufficient reason for school students to leave class.
Thousands nevertheless joined the demonstrations.
By Thursday, the planned walkout had become a real nationwide protest.
In Sydney, more than 1,000 protesters gathered around Town Hall, including high school and university students.
They carried anti-Hanson placards and chanted slogans including “the students united will never be defeated” and messages attacking racism and xenophobia.
In Adelaide, organisers also reported more than 1,000 participants outside Parliament House before protesters marched through the city.
Students from schools including Adelaide High School and Adelaide Botanic High School were among those reported at the demonstration.
Melbourne students gathered around the State Library of Victoria and marched through the CBD, while demonstrations were also organised in Brisbane, Canberra, Perth, Wollongong and Newcastle.
The rallies brought together university activists, secondary students and organisations from the political left.
The National Union of Students was central to organising the national day of action, while Socialist Alternative groups, Students for Palestine organisations and High School Anticapitalists were among those promoting or participating in demonstrations in different cities.
That organisational background has become one of the most contested elements of the story.
One of the organisers, Yasmine Johnson, was already a controversial political figure before the walkout.
Johnson is the 2026 education officer of the National Union of Students and has been publicly identified as a Socialist Alternative member.
She has also been involved with Students for Palestine.
Those affiliations are relevant because critics of the walkout have argued the demonstrations were not simply spontaneous expressions of concern by schoolchildren, but part of an organised political campaign involving established activist groups.
There is evidence supporting the latter proposition.
Socialist organisations openly promoted the demonstrations, and activist groups were visible at rallies distributing material and participating in chants.
That does not mean the students who attended lacked their own political views or were compelled to participate.
Both things can be true: established political activists can organise a demonstration, and individual students can independently agree with its cause.
The more serious controversy surrounding Johnson concerns previous comments about political violence.
At a public hearing in July, Johnson was questioned about resistance to colonisation and statements concerning violence by oppressed people.
She said resistance historically had involved elements of both mass non-violence and violent resistance.
That position has been used by critics to question the political environment surrounding the student protests.
But precision is especially important here.
The available material does not establish that Johnson instructed students attending Thursday’s anti-Hanson rallies to commit violence, nor that violence was the stated objective of the national walkout.
Her earlier remarks concerned a broader political argument about resistance and colonisation.
They can legitimately be scrutinised without being transformed into a claim she did not make.
Thursday’s demonstrations themselves were highly confrontational in rhetoric.
Protesters used profanity in chants directed at Hanson and One Nation.
In Sydney, students chanted messages telling Hanson to leave and carried signs accusing her party of racism.
In Adelaide, demonstrators chanted in support of transgender rights and used explicit slogans against the One Nation leader.
One Nation representatives were also present around some of the protests.
In Adelaide, state One Nation leader Cory Bernardi appeared near Parliament House but said police had advised him not to attend the demonstration itself.
Earlier, One Nation representatives attempting to observe an organising meeting had been identified and removed.
The confrontational atmosphere illustrates why the involvement of high school students has become so politically sensitive.
University activism is a longstanding feature of Australian political life. University students are adults, and campus organisations routinely participate in protests across the political spectrum.
Secondary students present a different question.
Some participants may be 17 or 18 and close to voting age. Others may be substantially younger.
That raises legitimate questions about parental consent, school attendance and the role adults — including politicians and organised political groups — should play in encouraging children to participate.
Faruqi’s supporters would argue young people have their own political interests.
Decisions made in Canberra will shape the lives of today’s school students long after many current politicians have left parliament.
Housing affordability, climate policy, university funding, student debt, employment conditions and migration will all affect them.
Some students participating in Thursday’s rallies will also be eligible to vote before the next federal election.
Australia has a long history of youth activism, including student involvement in campaigns over the Vietnam War, apartheid, climate change and other political causes.
The argument advanced by Faruqi and organisers is therefore that young people should not be treated as politically irrelevant simply because some have not reached voting age.
Walking out of class, from this perspective, is precisely what makes the protest meaningful.
If students demonstrated only after school, the action would lose the disruption that gives a walkout its symbolic power.
Critics see the same feature as its fundamental flaw.
A school day is not merely spare time controlled by politicians or activist organisations, they argue. Missing lessons has consequences, and elected representatives should not encourage students to disregard attendance expectations because they happen to agree with a particular political cause.
There is an obvious consistency test embedded in that argument.
People who celebrate students skipping school for a cause they support should consider how they would react if a conservative politician signed a symbolic permission slip encouraging students to leave class for a One Nation rally.
Likewise, politicians condemning Thursday’s walkout should consider whether they would apply the same standard to students leaving school for a political cause they personally supported.
Faruqi’s involvement also comes with a long and intensely personal history with Hanson.
The two senators are not merely ideological opponents.
They have been involved in one of the most bitter disputes in recent Australian political history.
After the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, Faruqi criticised the British Empire and said she could not mourn the leader of what she described as a racist empire.
Hanson responded on social media by telling Faruqi to “piss off back to Pakistan”.
Faruqi, who migrated from Pakistan to Australia in 1992, took legal action under the Racial Discrimination Act.
In 2024, the Federal Court found Hanson’s post amounted to unlawful racial discrimination and ordered it removed.
Hanson challenged that judgment.
The dispute has made Faruqi one of Hanson’s most prominent political adversaries and means her participation in an explicitly anti-Hanson campaign carries a personal history absent from many other politicians involved.
Faruqi has repeatedly described Hanson’s politics as racist and divisive.
Hanson rejects that characterisation and portrays herself as defending equal treatment, Australian sovereignty and restrictions on immigration rather than promoting racial discrimination.
Those competing descriptions sit at the centre of Thursday’s demonstrations.
The protest is also happening at a moment when One Nation is substantially more politically relevant.
The demonstrations were not organised simply because Hanson remains a controversial public figure.
They were promoted explicitly as a response to what organisers regard as One Nation’s growing influence and the broader rise of right-wing populist politics.
Recent polling has shown One Nation attracting levels of support far above those it enjoyed during much of its history.
That rise has changed how opponents respond to the party.
When One Nation was a smaller crossbench force, critics could largely focus on challenging individual policies or statements.
A party capable of attracting a much larger share of the primary vote presents a different political prospect.
Student organisers want to prevent Hanson’s positions from becoming normalised as that support grows.
One Nation, conversely, can use protests such as Thursday’s to reinforce its own anti-establishment narrative: that left-wing activists, universities and progressive politicians are mobilising against voters who reject the prevailing political consensus.
Both sides therefore have an incentive to make the confrontation visible.
Faruqi’s “permission slip” did exactly that.
The most important question is not whether a senator can actually excuse a student’s absence.
She cannot.
The question is whether she should publicly encourage it.
Faruqi has made her answer unambiguous.
She believes opposition to Hanson and One Nation is important enough for young Australians to walk out of class and demonstrate.
Hanson believes students are being pulled into a left-wing political campaign when they should be learning.
Labor figures who oppose Hanson’s politics have nevertheless argued that students should protest outside school hours.
Parents and schools will ultimately make their own judgments about individual students.
And thousands of young Australians made theirs on Thursday.
They left their classrooms and took to the streets.
Faruqi could not legally give them permission to do it.
But politically, she was more than happy to sign her name.
