"Die Pauline": the anti hate protest was the only place hate was recorded on Friday night

A thousand people marched through Moonee Ponds on Friday night to oppose what they called a party of hate. By evening's end, the only people recorded wishing death on anyone were the marchers.

"Die Pauline" was screamed at the 71 year old senator's face. "DEATH TO ONE NATION" was painted on a banner held aloft by masked protesters and captured by Sky News cameras. The party they came to stop held a sold out dinner across town and said "we're no Nazis" on its way in.

Here is the night, in order, from the public record.

How Friday unfolded

• One Nation's sold out fundraiser, An Evening for Victoria, with tickets from $200 to $2,000, is booked for Giorgio Casa in Moonee Ponds, in Melbourne's north west. Protest groups including the Victorian Socialists and the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism advertise a "Drive Hanson Out" rally for the restaurant's doorstep at 5:45pm.
• During the day Friday, a sign appears in the restaurant's window: "Due to the safety of our community, the event at Giorgio Casa has been cancelled." Victoria Police later confirm the decision was the venue's own, and say they are aware of no threats against it.
• The event is rebuilt at an unnamed venue in South Melbourne, on the opposite side of the city, roughly 12 kilometres and a CBD crossing away. Ticket holders are redirected so quietly that the protest organisers spend the afternoon wondering whether the event is cancelled or moved.
• By 5:30pm, Hanson and Joyce arrive at the new venue past a very small group of demonstrators who found the address. The Nightly reports one protester yelling "Die Pauline" and another calling the senator a Nazi as she walks in.
• At 5:45pm the main rally proceeds at Moonee Ponds Junction, outside a venue that is now empty. The Victorian Socialists claim more than 1,000 marchers.
• Outside the relocated venue, Sky News cameras film masked protesters holding a banner reading "DEATH TO ONE NATION." Police arrest and remove one man from outside the venue.
• Inside, dinner proceeds in front of a full One Nation Victoria branded stage, visible behind Joyce in the Sky News vision.

What was said, and by whom

The shocking transcript of the night belongs to the protest group.

"Die Pauline," screamed at the senator's face, per The Nightly. "DEATH TO ONE NATION," on a banner filmed by Sky News. "I HOPE THAT HURT," posted by GetUp over news of the cancellation, with a row of middle finger emojis and more than 4,000 likes.

From the party's side, the strongest language recorded all night was Joyce's:

"We're no Nazis." He told Sky he "thought we were in Pyongyang," told the crowd they were "advertising" for his party, and named the impulse from the stage: "They are so terrified of the change coming they are willing to say I want you gone, I want you dead."

Hanson, who told 10News she knows Victoria wants change, kept her focus on the guests who had to walk through the line to get inside. "This has happened for many years and it's a shame."

If a crowd outside a Labor fundraiser screamed "Die Anthony" beneath a "DEATH TO LABOR" banner, it would lead every bulletin in the country as an attack on our democracy, and it should. A death wish shouted into the face of a 71 year old woman is not protest. It is not counter speech. It is the thing the banners claim to oppose, and no political cause launders it. When rhetoric reaches "I want you dead," the people carrying it have forfeited the words "anti hate" entirely, and when it makes others fear for their safety, it stops being expression at all.

Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi was billed to speak at the "Drive Hanson Out" rally

Friday night wasn't a spontaneous community response. It was an organised campaign with printed materials, a speakers' program and party political backing. The Campaign Against Racism and Fascism's posters called on Melbourne to "DRIVE HANSON OUT," described the dinner as a fundraiser "to build their racist, far-right party," and updated the rally point to Moonee Ponds Junction as the venue situation shifted through the day.

The advertised speaker list is worth reading in full: Vina Afaj of the Campaign Against Racism and Fascism, Victorian Socialists candidates Anneke Demanuele and Omar Hassan, Students for Palestine convenor Jasmine Duff, union activist Jerome Small, and Mehreen Faruqi, the deputy leader of the Australian Greens. A sitting federal senator, billed on a poster calling for a colleague to be driven out of a Melbourne suburb.

Whether Senator Faruqi ultimately spoke, and whether she condemns the "DEATH TO ONE NATION" banner and the "Die Pauline" scream that her advertised rally produced, are questions her office should answer. So far it hasn't been asked to. It's also the second time in three days: the protest outside Hanson's Perth event on Wednesday was promoted as endorsed by The Greens. One major party's deputy leader headlining the campaign to shut down another party's events, in the same fortnight that party overtook hers in every national poll, is not a footnote to this story. It might be the story.

Labor's 2025 hate crimes act protects political opinion, and the banner may breach it

In February 2025, the Albanese government passed the Criminal Code Amendment (Hate Crimes) Act, creating federal offences for threatening force or violence against a group distinguished by, among other attributes, political opinion, where a reasonable member of that group would fear the threat being carried out. The offence carries up to five years. The government removed any good faith defence, reasoning that threats of violence cannot be made in good faith.

On Friday night, Sky News cameras filmed a banner outside One Nation's relocated fundraiser reading "DEATH TO ONE NATION," held by masked protesters, on a night when a venue had already folded citing safety and guests walked a protest line to reach their dinner. Whether a banner meets the legal threshold of a threat is a question for the Australian Federal Police, and no one has been charged. But the question now exists, created by the government's own statute: it wrote political opinion into its hate crimes law, and sixteen months later the most prominent candidate for its application is a banner carried by people marching under "no room for hate."

One more detail from the footage. On the banner, the word "ONE" has been crossed out in orange and replaced with "THIS." Death to this nation. Somewhere on Friday night, the target stopped being a political party.

Victoria's own laws explain the night's strange asymmetry. The state's vilification offences protect race, religion and a list of attributes expanded in 2024, but political affiliation isn't on it, while Nazi gestures are criminal per se. That's how a man performing a salute gets handcuffed on the spot while a death banner gets a police escort: the parliament decided in advance whose hatred counts.

The Moonee Ponds venue that folded

Victoria Police said they were aware of no threats against Giorgio Casa. They didn't need to be. Nobody has to phone in a threat when a thousand person march is advertised for your footpath and the campaign material reads "drive out" and "no room."

A family restaurant cancelled a sold out Friday night, at a cost it won't recover, and put the reason on its own door: safety. The owner hasn't spoken publicly, and you can understand why. The people celebrating call this a victory for tolerance. The intimidation didn't fail to materialise. It worked so well it never had to arrive.

Redirected in an afternoon, sold out anyway

The measure of the night is the gap between a sign in a window in Moonee Ponds and a senator at a podium in South Melbourne, and it redirected within hours. A ticketed function for paying guests was torn down in one suburb and standing tall in another, catering, security and a fully branded One Nation Victoria stage included, by dinner service, with every ticket holder privately redirected across 12 kilometres of city. Exactly how much notice the venue gave the party hasn't been made public, and One Nation hasn't yet said.

The man arrested outside, whom the Daily Mail labelled a neo Nazi, was not a guest, has no connection to One Nation, and his arrest grounds are yet to be confirmed by Victoria Police.

Despite this, donations continued to pour in at an unprecedented pace, recently topping $3,419,448 as the total keeps climbing.

Perth police held a perimeter and the event stayed put. Melbourne's had to flee

Why this event, why this week? The protest's own organiser answered before it began. "The event is seen as a chance by the left to express hostility to the rise of support for the far right One Nation Party," Omar Hassan said on Friday, adding that a no show would be claimed as "a victory against racism and the billionaires."

Hostility to the rise of support. Not to anything said or done. To the polling.

And the polling explains the panic. The Herald Sun's Freshwater poll this week put Victorian Labor third on 21%, behind the Coalition on 30% and One Nation on 23%, up two points, with Premier Jacinta Allan's approval at 45, minus 2 points and 53% of Victorians wanting her gone (11% undecided) before November's election. Federally, One Nation led three national polls in a week, and Fire the Liar, per AAP, now claims more than $3 million from almost 50,000 donors.

A thousand people didn't march through Moonee Ponds because One Nation is fringe. They marched because it isn't anymore.

When a movement's answer to losing the argument with voters is a death banner outside a pensioner's dinner, it has conceded the argument. The dinner went ahead. The counter kept climbing. And somewhere in Moonee Ponds, a family restaurant is counting the cost of other people's tolerance.

What it now takes to hold a dinner

Compare the two cities, three nights apart. In Perth on Wednesday, police kept a WA Socialists protest at a distance from Hanson's sold out Sundowner in Midland, and the event ran where it was booked, start to finish. In Melbourne on Friday, the venue folded by lunchtime, the function fled 12 kilometres across the city, and the people wishing the party dead still found the new address by 5:30pm.

That's the operating reality now for the party leading the national primary vote: secured buildings, vetted venues, police perimeters, and contingency plans, not for a visiting head of state, but for a dinner. Every future Victorian event on this tour will be planned around the assumption that a crowd carrying death banners will attempt to shut it down, because one already has. Western Australia showed the model works when police hold the line early and far enough out. Victoria showed what happens when the line is a restaurant owner standing alone behind his own front window.

The cost of that security, in dollars and in distance between a political party and the public it's asking to vote for it, is borne entirely by the party being targeted. Which may, of course, be the point.