One Nation keeps NSW candidate Stuart Bonds despite backlash over 'demographically replaced' remarks

In a Facebook video from a Sydney anti-immigration rally held on a Sunday, a man dressed as a medieval knight stands in the background while Stuart Bonds, One Nation's lead upper house candidate in New South Wales, speaks against "mass" migration. "Make no mistake, we are being demographically replaced inside our own nation," he says. He goes on to argue that if Australians do not back Australian mothers having Australian children, the country will end up paying to raise other cultures' children, and he calls it a socialist plan to tear down the fabric of civilisation.

The language echoes the "great replacement theory", the far-right conspiracy theory that white westerners are being deliberately replaced by minority ethnic immigrants. The remarks drew wide criticism, but One Nation has shown no sign of removing Bonds from the ticket for the state election in March 2027. The party did drop a candidate this week: its Victorian branch disendorsed a lower-house candidate over an old social media post calling Hitler the "GOAT", shorthand for greatest of all time.

The rally was not a one-off. On a podcast released Monday with the rally's organiser, the Australian Lobby Group, Bonds appeared to double down. He did not challenge host Scott Challen's claim that Labor governments were building "ethnic voting blocks" of Middle Eastern and subcontinent people to entrench their power. Instead he replied that this was why One Nation would get rid of all multicultural grants. On Wednesday, he told ABC Upper Hunter that Australian Bureau of Statistics data shows the share of Australians born overseas rising from 10% in 1945 to 32% in 2025. He did not mention that the share was higher still, at 32.4%, in 1891, the first year of data. With the birthrate below the 2.1 needed to replace the population, he said, he would like to know what people think is going to happen, and where the people will come from.

NSW Labor responded immediately. Premier Chris Minns called the comments "frankly outrageous and racist", and the government passed motions in both houses censuring Bonds, who is not yet a member of parliament. Deputy premier Prue Car, who has Indian heritage and holds the seat of Londonderry, told question time on Tuesday that Bonds was talking about families like hers and those she represents. Treasurer Daniel Mookhey, whose parents emigrated from India in the 1970s, said Bonds appeared to be alleging a deliberate conspiracy to use migrants to replace native-born Australians for political reasons, and that it was not grounded in reality.

The Coalition took four days to follow. On Wednesday afternoon, opposition leader Kellie Sloane called Bonds' language "clearly divisive". But she did not rule out a confidence and supply arrangement with One Nation after the election, saying the Coalition would not form a coalition with the party but would work with anyone if in minority government. The Australian Financial Review has reported that many of her MPs privately expect a Coalition with One Nation, and the Coalition has been polling consistently behind One Nation.

One Nation's state leader, Mike Newman, did not directly say whether he agreed with Bonds or would rein him in. He called Bonds a patriotic Aussie and coalminer with very strong views, and said the aim was to protect Australian values and promote assimilation. In September Newman said he "made a mistake" when he told a Sydney rally he wanted to stop abortions.

The electoral stakes are concrete. The quota for the upper house is 4.5%, and One Nation has been polling in the high 20s and low 30s in recent months, making Bonds all but certain of a seat. Antony Green, the ABC's former election analyst, expects the party to win four or five seats; it has so far named three candidates, Newman, Bonds and Jeff Bacon, a firearms manufacturer who is second on the ticket. Green said Labor would use the remarks in multi-ethnic Sydney seats, including those on the city's rural fringe that One Nation plans to target. Kos Samaras, a former Labor strategist now at Redbridge, said the comments could alienate moderate Liberal voters in Sydney but that "you might be able to get away with it" in parts of NSW. Bonds' base is the Hunter, and Samaras said One Nation could "clean the deck" in regional seats, including Labor-held ones there.

Unlike Victoria, NSW has optional preferential voting, so lower-house preference flows are not guaranteed. Asked whether he had jeopardised a preference deal with the Coalition, Bonds said that if the Coalition had a problem with facts, perhaps, but that he was not there to impress them. What to watch before March is whether Sloane's position on working with One Nation shifts.