A tweet by Pauline Hanson telling Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi to “piss off back to Pakistan” was “not nice” but it did not fall foul of racial vilification laws, the One Nation senator’s barrister has told a court.
Faruqi is suing Hanson under racial discrimination laws in response to the comment on Twitter, now X, which was posted on September 9, 2022. The Federal Court trial before Justice Angus Stewart started in Sydney on Monday.
Mehreen Faruqi and Pauline Hanson outside the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday.Credit: Nick Moir
Faruqi, an Australian citizen who migrated from Pakistan in 1992 and is deputy leader of the Greens, is seeking court orders requiring Hanson to delete the post, attend anti-racism training at her own cost, and make a $150,000 donation to a charity chosen by Faruqi.
Kieran Smark, SC, the lead barrister acting for Hanson, said in closing submissions in the Federal Court on Thursday that Hanson was not telling Faruqi literally to “go back to where you came from”.
“We say it’s a rhetorical device,” he said.
Smark said Hanson “undoubtedly ... could have expressed herself differently and more reasonably”.
“It’s not nice. It’s not a nice tweet. It wasn’t a polite tweet. It wasn’t meant to be a polite tweet. Senator Hanson was angry, and she thought she had reason to be angry, and she wanted readers … to be aware of her anger and the reason why, or the reasons why.”
The court has heard Hanson’s comment on X was a response to a post by the Greens senator, who had noted the death of Queen Elizabeth II and said she could not “mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples”.
Hanson posted in reply: “When you immigrated to Australia you took every advantage of this country ... It’s clear you’re not happy, so pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan.”
Faruqi alleges Hanson’s post amounted to unlawful offensive behaviour under the Racial Discrimination Act because the comment was reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate, and it was done because of her race, colour or national or ethnic origin.
But Hanson’s legal team argue the comment fell within an exemption because she acted reasonably and in good faith in making a fair comment on a matter of public interest, and it was an “expression of a genuine belief”.
Smark submitted on Thursday that the exemption “is satisfied in this case”. He said the One Nation leader was pointing out that Faruqi had “received the benefits from Australia, from the system, which she was now, on the death of the Queen, attacking”.
The judge said: “Senator Hanson said that she was calling out hypocrisy, but I’m struggling to understand why that’s hypocrisy.
“Senator Hanson herself is outspokenly critical of government policy and aspects of Australian society. That doesn’t make her a hypocrite. That doesn’t make her un-Australian.
“Why is it hypocritical of someone else to be critical of aspects of Australia or its history, unless it’s because they’re from somewhere else and they’re not actually welcome here?” Stewart asked.
Smark said that “the hypocrisy was in breaking, I don’t want to call it a taboo, but the well-understood convention that you wouldn’t attack people, let alone someone like the Queen, within hours of her death”.
Stewart suggested it appeared the tweet was not an attack on the Queen but the institution, prompting Smark to say it would be open to conclude that Faruqi was being “disingenuous” when she offered her condolences in the first line of her tweet “to those who knew the Queen”.
Smark also argued the Racial Discrimination Act provisions fell foul of the implied freedom of political communication in the Commonwealth Constitution, and were invalid in full or in part. The law “over-reaches, in a constitutional sense”, he said, and its chilling effect on political discourse was “profound”.
But the Commonwealth attorney-general, represented in the hearing by Craig Lenehan, SC, defended the constitutional validity of the sections. Lenehan said in written submissions that the law strikes an “adequate” balance and its direct purpose “is not to restrict political communication”.
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