One Nation Senator’s bombshell appeal of racial vilification court case
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has filed new claims after a Federal Court found she racially vilified a fellow senator by telling her to ‘p*ss off back to Pakistan’.
EXCLUSIVE
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has hit back over a Federal Court finding that she racially vilified Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi by telling her to “p*ss off back to Pakistan” in a new legal filing that insists the sledge was not racist.
Hitting back at Federal Court judgment that a tearful Senator Hanson said had made her question the country she grew up in, her legal team is asking for that decision to be overturned and for her costs to be covered.
In essence, her team has argued Senator Hanson telling a colleague to go back to Pakistan wasn’t racist because she never mentioned Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi’s skin colour.
In newly-filed appeal documents Senator Hanson also says she previously told another Senator to go back to New Zealand.
Senator Hanson raises nearly $700,000 to defend her “right to free speech”
Senator Hanson is cashed-up and ready to fight, with supporters donating nearly $700,000 to help pay for her legal team.
She is being represented by leading barrister Sue Chrysathanou, and her solicitor is Anthony Jeffries, who also represents Channel 10’s Lisa Wilkinson in the Bruce Lehrmann defamation trial.
The legal dispute is not a defamation case but rather relates to racial vilification.
In a summary of his judgment on November 1, Justice Angus Stewart described the post on Twitter, now X, as an “angry personal attack” that conveyed a “strong form of racism”.
But her legal team has now hit back in legal documents filed with the Federal Court, insisting the encouragement to leave the country was not racist at all because “it only targeted Senator Faruqi, there is no explicit or implicit reference to colour.”
“It was not pleaded nor put to Senator Hanson that the Hanson tweet targeted immigrants (generally) and “people of colour”,’’ the defence states.
The defence also argues it was wrong to suggest the social media post was anti-Muslim.
“The primary judge erred in finding that the Hanson tweet targets Muslims and conveys an anti-Muslim message ([223]), in circumstances where there was not a single implicit or explicit reference to Islam in the Hanson tweet,’’ the document states.
“The primary judge asked himself the wrong question in holding that the appropriate reasoning process was putting himself in the position of the “reasonable victim” and seeing matters from that person’s perspective ([241]).
“The primary judge erred in finding that the Hanson tweet was reasonably likely in all the circumstances to offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate groups of people by reference to the groups “people of colour who are migrants to Australia or are Australians of relatively recent migrant heritage” and “Muslims who are people of colour in Australia”.
“None of these groups were pleaded by Senator Faruqi, and Senator Hanson was not given notice that these groups would be the subject of adverse findings against her until the publication of the judgment.”
Background to a blow-up
The background dates back to September 2022, when Senator Faruqi took to X (formerly Twitter) with the following post regarding Queen Elizabeth II’s death.
“Condolences to those who mourn the Queen. I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonized people,” she wrote.
“We are reminded of the urgency of Treaty with First Nations, justice & reparations for British colonies & becoming a republic.”
Senator Pauline Hanson responded with the following tweet:
“Your attitude appals and disgusts me. When you immigrated to Australia you took every advantage of this country. You took citizenship, bought multiple homes, and a job in a parliament. It’s clear you’re not happy, so pack your bags and p*ss off back to Pakistan. – PH”
In a landmark ruling, Senator Mehreen Faruqi successfully argued that Senator Pauline Hanson’s social media post violated section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth) (RDA).
An emotional Faruqi hugged her legal team after the original judgment was handed down this month, and Senator Faruqi said the win sent “a strong message to racists that they will be held accountable” and made clear that “hate speech is not free speech”.
“Today is a win for every single person who has been told to go back to where they came from, and believe me, there are too many of us,” Faruqi said, adding that the case had taken “a very personal toll”.
The judgment was “an affirmation for migrants that people of colour do not have to be grateful or to keep quiet”, she said: “I will be speaking out more loudly and more strongly than ever before.
“Today’s judgment is a landmark … It is a warning for people like Pauline Hanson, and I do hope it emboldens individuals and communities to assert their right to live free from racism.”
In an interview with Sky News host Andrew Bolt after the verdict, Ms Hanson broke down in tears saying Australia was “not the country I grew up in” and that “people can’t say what they think anymore”.
Read related topics:Pauline Hanson