Students from Hunter high schools and the University of Newcastle occupied Civic Park Thursday evening to protest the rise of the populist right in Australia, embodied by a surge in support for Pauline Hanson's One Nation.
The Hunter demonstration, at which dozens of students chanted slogans of dissent for Ms Hanson and her policies coincided with a national student strike that saw thousands skip school in a coordinated national protest this week.
Hunter activist Lily Campbell organised the Newcastle protest in response to a call to assemble by the National Student Union and, she said, to calls from almost a dozen Hunter students to stage a local demonstration.
The region's young people were opposed to Ms Hanson's populist far-right politics, and rejected her so-called "monoculture" view of the nation's culture as politics of division and racism.
"Students have always been at the forefront of movements for social justice," Campbell said. "Seeing students getting out and demonstrating their opposition to these injustices has mobilised broader sections of society behind them, but young people have fewer rights to participate in civil society."
"They don't have a vote. The only way that they can make their voices heard is by getting out in the streets and protesting."
Senator Hanson condemned the protests on social media on Thursday, posting students should instead be protesting the cost-of-living crisis and stagnant national wage growth.
"The Labor Greens government is selling out your future, and you'll inherit a weaker, poorer and less safe country," she wrote on social media on Wednesday.
"Whether you know it or not, One Nation and I are fighting for you."
Senator Hanson used her June National Press Club address to call for a monocultural Australia before appearing on a podcast hosted by British far-right activist and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson during a work trip to the UK in July.
One Nation's primary vote has ballooned in the past 12 months, amid a string of shifts in the political landscape including the defection former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce.
Latest polling from Roy Morgan shows One Nation's primary vote sitting at 26 per cent in early August.
Further calls for students not to sideline their studies on Thursday came from politicians including federal Education Minister Jason Clare and Victorian Premier Ben Carroll.
"If people want to protest on the weekend, then fill your boots, but I want you at school when school is on, learning," Mr Clare told reporters.
A spokesperson for the NSW Department of Education said students were "expected to be at school, any unexplained absences are dealt with and followed up in the usual way".
Eleena Roche, a student at the University of Newcastle, said she had joined the protest because she wanted to "fight against the far right and its rise in Australia".
Roche was joined by another University of Newcastle undergraduate, Agora, who declined to give a surname, in a shared fear that the surge of the far-right in the US in recent years was finding new ground in Australia.
"I think nationalism is ingrained in the white Australia," Agora said. "It is within the fabric, and especially with everything that has been going on in America, we call fall in with that."
Roche urged dissenters to "look outside of what you believe".
"So many people are so quick to label us as hippies or the far-left without actually looking at what they are supporting," she said.
"One Nation's policies are bad for everyone; minorities, women, parents, workers."
Deputy lord mayor Charlotte McCabe was among the roster of student speakers, and said the rise of Senator Hanson's party had been drawn from a "fear" in voters, particularly those living in regions facing large scale upheaval in the face of climate change, energy transition, and other vast shifts in culture and economics.
"She is tapping into a lot of different types of fear, but it it is understandable," Councillor McCabe said, going on to speak about "anger, fear and uncertainty" among Hunter workers amid an energy transition that has been reshaping the traditional industries of the region.
"We have already seen coal companies close their doors, care about their profits and not their workers, and walk away," Councillor McCabe said.
Speakers denounced connections between Senator Hanson and mining magnate Gina Rinehart, and condemned the influence of political donations on national policy.
Campbell, though, argued that Senator Hanson's recent groundswell was a product of voters who had become victims of the status quo.
"The collapse of the Liberal party as the traditional home for conservative voters has allowed Pauline Hanson's base to massively grow," Campbell said. "That has been compounded by people's living standards declining for many years now. People are angry and looking for answers."
"They're looking for something outside the mainstream."
"People like Hanson, like Farage and Trump, are taking an existing bedrock of racism and nationalism and taking it to a whole other level."
"Migrants are not to blame for all the woes people are experiencing. It's billionaires who are to blame and the political parties who serve them and their interests. Instead of turning to nationalism, we need to look to organising ordinary people to push back for a better world for all of us."
- with reporting by AAP.
