Neil Perry blamed wages and rates for $12 coffee in March, now it's Hanson he's leaving over

Sydney chef and restaurateur Neil Perry has told news.com.au he won't be living in Australia if Pauline Hanson ever becomes prime minister. His quote, as published, reads: "If she is (in as PM), I won't be living in Australia."

The threat landed on 15 June 2026, the same day a new Resolve Political Monitor poll in the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age put the One Nation leader ahead of Anthony Albanese as preferred prime minister for the first time. The timing was generous.

It's a big call from a man who spent March telling Australians something very different about what was actually wrong with the country, and none of it was Pauline Hanson.

What Perry was warning about in March

In March 2026, Perry spoke at The Australian's Global Food Forum in Sydney and warned that a coffee in Australia could cost $12 within five years. The pressures he named weren't political.

Perry told the forum it was "now incredibly expensive to have young baristas" and pointed to a 5% annual rise in the basic hospitality award wage every year since COVID. "That just has a knock-on effect," he said, with rising wages, rent and ingredient costs all stacking. On the Reserve Bank's rate hike to 4.1%, the highest since April 2025, Perry said "the inflation rate is getting well above where real wages are growing."

He told the forum more Australians were already thinking twice about dining out because of "the relentless squeeze on household budgets."

Hanson didn't get a mention. Wages, the RBA cash rate and inflation aren't One Nation policy.

A run of venue changes

The cost backdrop Perry described in March has played out across his own Double Bay venues over the past year, though on his own framing rather than as forced closures.

Bobbie's, the basement cocktail bar he opened with wife Samantha Perry and New York operators Linden Pride and Nathalie Hudson, closed in mid 2025. Perry said the decision was mutual and tied to Pride's US group expanding. Song Bird, his three level Cantonese restaurant, had its final service in August 2025 and reopened as the Italian diner Gran Torino. "We missed the mark by creating a three-level Chinese restaurant in Double Bay," Perry said at the time.

The reshaping continued into 2026. In May, Perry told Broadsheet he was converting Bar Torino into a pizzeria and scaling back Cafe Margaret, with the changes to be complete by June 2026. "Look, I don't think we're really that great at running bars, to be honest," he said.

What the Resolve poll actually says

Resolve surveyed 1,801 voters between 8 and 13 June. Hanson sat on 33% as preferred prime minister, ahead of Albanese on 29% and Opposition Leader Angus Taylor on 16%. Undecided voters made up the remaining 22%.

On the primary vote, One Nation rose five points to 29%, ahead of Labor on 28% and the Coalition on 20%. Resolve director Jim Reed told the publishers the result confirmed One Nation's support was no longer confined to its traditional voter base, with backing now extending to voters from migrant and multicultural communities.

Liberal frontbencher Aaron Violi conceded the party had broken faith with voters after two Coalition breakups and a leadership change earlier this year, when Angus Taylor replaced Sussan Ley in February.

Who Neil Perry is

Perry AM is a Sydney based chef and restaurateur. He runs Margaret, Next Door and his Double Bay venues, and has been the food and beverage creative director for Qantas Flight Catering for around 25 years. In June 2024 he received the Icon Award at the World's 50 Best Restaurants awards, the first Australian chef to do so.

The Rockpool wage scandal that ran through his old empire

Perry founded the Rockpool group. He sold it to Quadrant Private Equity backed Urban Purveyor Group in late 2016 for a reported $65 million and stayed on as culinary director and brand ambassador. The merged business operated as Rockpool Dining Group.

In June 2018, a Fairfax investigation revealed systemic underpayment across the Rockpool restaurants. In October 2018, Rockpool Dining Group agreed to back pay around $1.6 million in unpaid wages covering 2017 and 2018. The company said its legacy systems "were not capable of appropriately ensuring, in all instances, that every team member received correct payments to reflect hours worked."

In July 2019, Nepalese chef Rohit Karki filed a Federal Court claim against the group through Maurice Blackburn. Karki alleged that during six years at Rockpool Bar and Grill in Melbourne he had worked weeks of over 70 hours, including 20 hour shifts from 4am to midnight, and at one point slept on a pastry bench between shifts because he didn't have time to go home. Maurice Blackburn principal Josh Bornstein called it a "Dickensian example of wage theft and exploitation of vulnerable workers." The firm estimated Karki had been underpaid by around $200,000 over six years. Karki was on a 457 temporary work visa for much of his employment.

Three months later, Hospo Voice, the hospitality workers' union, lodged a separate complaint with the Fair Work Ombudsman alleging total wage theft across Rockpool Dining Group of at least $10 million, including claims that managers had tampered with timesheet software to disguise hours worked. Rockpool Dining Group denied the broader allegations, calling them "false and misleading." The Karki matter went to Federal Court mediation in October 2019.

Perry retired as Rockpool Dining Group culinary director in July 2020 and remained a shareholder. The group was split in May 2021 into Hunter St Hospitality and Pacific Concepts, both still owned by Quadrant Private Equity.

A hypothetical, not an election

Hanson is a Senator for Queensland. Under Westminster convention, prime ministers come from the House of Representatives, which would require Hanson to either resign her Senate seat and contest a lower house seat herself, or persuade another member to vacate one she could win at a by-election. The next federal election isn't due until 2028.

She doesn't set the cash rate. She doesn't set the hospitality award wage. And she isn't currently in government.

The destination he didn't name

Perry didn't say where he'd go. Over the same weekend that news.com.au published the quote, the two most prominent English speaking alternatives were dealing with significant unrest of their own.

In New York, Knicks NBA championship celebrations on Saturday night ended with 63 arrests, five school buses set on fire in Times Square, ten NYPD officers injured and a 17 year old shot in the foot near 42nd Street and Broadway, all on the watch of Democrat Governor Kathy Hochul.

In the United Kingdom, the same Saturday brought coordinated anti mass migration protests across Sheffield, Brighton, Liverpool and Maidstone, with arrests in multiple cities and a smaller flare up in Glasgow. The protests followed the arrest of a Sudanese national over an alleged attempted beheading.

What Perry hasn't said

The news.com.au piece doesn't include a destination, a timeline, or any comment from Perry on the future of his Australian restaurants. It also doesn't explain why the wage and rate pressures that worried him in March stopped being the problem in June.