Pauline Hanson doubles down on calls to Aussies to ignore divisive’ and ‘tokenistic’ Welcome to Country ceremonies

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has stepped up her calls for Australians to turn their backs on Welcome to Country ceremonies.

Senator Hanson reaffirmed her strong stance on the “divisive” ceremonies in a heated interview with Sky News presenter Chris Kenny on Wednesday evenings.

The debate on the topic was sparked earlier this month by Brendan Kerin, playing for the Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council before the Welcome to Country AFL semi-final match between the GWS Giants and the Brisbane Lions in Sydney.

“Welcome to Country is not a ceremony that we invented for white people, it’s a ceremony that we’ve been doing for over 250,000 years before Christ — and BC stands for Before Cook,” he said before the game.

Tensions surrounding the ceremonies only increased on Monday evening after a Welcome Address was delivered at the Brownlow Medal ceremony.

Ms Hanson recently urged Australians who have had ‘fed up’ with traditional ceremonies to ignore them.

On Wednesday she reiterated her position, describing the ceremony as “symbolic” and questioning why she was expected to recognise “old, present and future elders”.

“It was actually not common at that time. Many tribes were fighting with each other. They did not welcome each other into the country,” she said, referring to Mr. Kerin’s comments.

“If we are going to give recognition, we need to recognise the men and women who sacrificed their lives to defend our freedom and our way of life. That would be much more acceptable to most Australians.”

Senator Hanson also claimed she had received multiple messages from fed-up Australians expressing support for the scrapping of the Welcome to Country ceremonies.

“I’m sick of the racist connotations, all the time. We can’t say anything about it. I’m called a racist if I criticise anything that has to do with Aboriginal people,” she fumed.

‘I was born here for Christ’s sake. Where is my connection to the land?

“I find it divisive. I feel offended by it. I’m tired of hearing about it.”

Mr Kenny accused Senator Hanson of “completely misunderstanding” Mr Kerin’s speech.

He explained that the message was not intended to welcome ‘white people’ to Australia, but that it was a tradition going back thousands of years to greet anyone visiting the land of another tribe, for example the Gadigal in Sydney.

Senator Hanson said she had heard from many employees and companies that they “had to give the speech” before team meetings.

“People are just fed up with it. They’re over it,” she said.

Instead of having the song performed at every public event, she suggested having it performed only at events for indigenous peoples.

“I turn my back on it in parliament,” she said.

‘I just don’t accept it and I’m done with it.

“I feel really insulted that they won’t acknowledge that we are Australians.”

Earlier this week, Indigenous leader Warren Mundine suggested creating a script for the Welcome to Country ceremonies to avoid future confusion and debate.

“I’m currently talking to some Bundjalung people back home about actually doing that. We have a script, a few paragraphs or something, where we welcome people and do it in a good way by bringing them together rather than dividing them,” he told Sky News.

Mr Mundine also hit out at Senator Hanson, saying her move to “turn her back” on the ceremony would only deepen divisions.

“We want them to go back to the original concept, which is that we welcome people, we say hello, you’re here, we welcome you,” he said.

“I think we need to go back to the concept of actually welcoming people, working together and not creating division.”

Mr Mundine said Welcome to Country was “a wonderful idea, where we are telling people we welcome them”.

“It’s starting to look like a very divided political movement,” he said.

“Look, I’m sorry Pauline. I think you went a step too far.”

But he did admit that Kerin’s Welcome to Country release was divisive.

“He also fell into the Pauline Hanson lineage,” he said.

“He’s causing division. Let’s get back to what this is really about.”