Chris Minns Responds to One Nation Candidate’s Replacement Claim
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns called Stuart Bonds’ claim that Australians face “demographic replacement” “frankly outrageous and racist.” Bonds made the remarks at an anti-immigration rally in Sydney, drawing criticism from Australia’s race discrimination commissioner and federal multicultural affairs minister Anne Aly.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns called One Nation candidate Stuart Bonds’ claim that Australians face “demographic replacement” “frankly outrageous and racist” after Bonds spoke at an anti-immigration rally in Sydney on Sunday.
Bonds, who heads One Nation’s New South Wales upper house ticket, said “mass migration” must be curtailed. The comments drew criticism from Australia’s race discrimination commissioner and federal multicultural affairs minister Anne Aly.
“Make no mistake, we are being demographically replaced inside our own nation,” Bonds told several hundred rally attendees in Sydney’s central business district.
He warned that unless the trend was stopped, it would be “impossible to reverse.” Bonds also said a country was “a shared culture, a shared border, a shared flag, a shared language and a dominant religion”.
Minns called the replacement theory “just a conspiracy theory that’s been imported from the US here to Australia”. He urged voters to consider what role Bonds might hold if One Nation entered government with the Coalition.
“Trade, education, Treasury? I mean, what job will this bloke have in a Coalition-One Nation government?” Minns said. He also asked whether the Coalition would distance itself from Bonds’ views.
Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman said claims that some Australians were superior to others sowed “division and hate”.
“The idea that migrants can never truly be Australian ignores both our history and our shared future,” Sivaraman said on Monday. He said blaming migrants for complex problems risked fuelling division, exclusion and racism.
At the rally, Bonds referred to abortion rates in Europe, the United States and Australia. He said, “If we don’t support Australian mothers having Australian children, we are going to pay for other cultures’ children to be brought up in our lands.”
He also said Australia was on a path “of becoming a special economic zone within Asia” and called for the country to “re-establish ourselves as a proud Australian nation”.
Anne Aly said Australians with migrant backgrounds were not replacing Australians. Her remarks followed the rally and criticism from Minns and Sivaraman.
Bonds is likely to be elected in March’s state election based on current polling. The Coalition’s multiculturalism spokesperson Mark Coure and One Nation’s New South Wales headquarters were asked for comment.
