These f*kcing judges are insane.
Pauline Hanson “racially discriminated against a Muslim senator” in a 2022 tweet by telling her to return to Pakistan, a court has ruled, upholding an earlier decision.
The One Nation party leader had appealed a 2024 ruling that found she had breached the Racial Discrimination Act when she responded to a post by Senator Mehreen Faruqi with an “angry personal attack” that was described as “anti-Muslim”.
Hanson had argued in the Federal Court that political communication should be protected, but Justice Melissa Perry dismissed her appeal on Monday.
“Today’s win is for every single person who has been made to feel that their belonging in this country is conditional,” Faruqi said outside court.
“This case was always about holding to account racism and holding to account those who perpetrate racism,” she added. “Hate speech is not free speech.”
On the day Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022, Faruqi offered condolences to those mourning the Queen in a social media post. However, she added: “I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised people.”
Hanson responded with a post that Judge Angus Stewart described in 2024 as “a variant of the slogan, ‘go back to where you came from’”.
The phrase was “a racist trope with a long history” and “implicitly” targeted Muslims, he said.
He ordered Hanson to delete the tweet and pay Faruqi’s legal costs.
Faruqi, the deputy leader of the Greens, took Hanson to court after the tweet was posted, arguing that it breached the Racial Discrimination Act.
She argued that the post was reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or group and was made because of her race, colour, or national or ethnic origin.
Hanson has previously advocated for a “Muslim ban” on immigration and earlier this year attracted criticism for an interview in which she suggested there were no “good” Muslims.
This month, Hanson denied that she was advocating for a return to the “White Australia” policy, under which Australia restricted non-white immigration from 1901 until the policy was dismantled between the 1960s and 1970s.
In a podcast with British far-right activist Tommy Robinson, Robinson asked Hanson how Australia had ended up with “Pakistanis, Somalis, all of these African problems with violent Africans?”
Hanson responded that it began when “they opened up and got rid of the White Australian policy”.
