Pauline Hanson takes to the witness box in defamation trial
Pauline Hanson has been accused of lying under oath as her defamation battle against a parliamentary colleague heats up.
Pauline Hanson has repeatedly cited a failure to recall her own documented statements and has been accused of lying under oath when she claimed she did not know Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi was a Muslim before the beginning of court proceedings.
Senator Faruqi’s legal representation has vowed to submit a claim to the Federal Court that Senator Hanson has knowingly lied in court as she faces defamation proceedings surrounding an allegedly racist remark against her parliamentary counterpart.
“It never entered my mind if she was (a Muslim) or not,” Senator Hanson said during cross-examination. “I was not aware of her religious background. It was irrelevant.”
Senator Faruqi’s representative, KC Saul Holt, presented the court with recordings of media statements made by Senator Hanson since she entered federal office.
Beginning with an excerpt from the program Sunrise in 2010, Senator Hanson said she “probably (did) not” believe she would not sell her home to a Muslim when she said at the time she would refuse to do so.
She sought to reclarify the archival statement to say that she only had a problem with “fundamentalist Muslims” and would have hypothetically sold her old home to Senator Faruqi had the situation arisen.
HANSON CAN’T “RECALL” STATEMENTS
When questioned on other statements tendered as evidence, such as her claim that Muslim Australians celebrated the 9/11 hijackings, or her belief in a potential invasion of the Australian government by Muslims, Senator Hanson alleged she could not recall whether she made the statements or had believed in their sentiment.
Senator Hanson resisted the majority of suggestions regarding her mindset in making statements pertinent to the case, including any reasoning for suggesting Senator Faruqi leave Australia.
“I suggest that the reason that you told Senator Faruqi to pack her bags and piss off back to Pakistan, at least a reason that you did that, was because she was from Pakistan,” Mr Holt said.
“No,” Senator Hanson replied.
Senator Hanson was presented with three more historic statements of hers: that taxpayer funds were pay-rolling “Muslim polygamy”, that mosques were “un-Australian”, and in a recent interview saying “we have Muslims in this country marrying, getting on our welfare system, breeding and we are paying for all of this”.
Senator Hanson said she could not recall any of the three statements.
She told the court that when she submitted the “It’s OK to be white” bill to parliament that she was not aware of the connotations of the phrase as used by white supremacists and the Ku Klux Klan.
“ALL LIVES MATTER”
“I think all lives matter, and it’s okay to be white. That’s why the context was used,” Senator Hanson said.
“My staff brought (the phrase) to me.”
Senator Hanson said she historically pushed for a curb in the immigration of white migrants, and had not specifically targeted ethnic minorities in her advocacy.
Senator Hanson would not confirm she knew she owned the One Nation YouTube channel named “Pauline Hanson’s Please Explain” but she “believed)” she did.
Senator Hanson did not remember creating the hashtag #prayformuslimban or advocating for a total Muslim ban, the court heard.
When it came to the Senator’s official Twitter account, @PaulineHansonOz, she alleged no statement on it was guaranteed to have been her own. Senator Hanson told the court staffers had only begun to run the senator’s tweets by her “in the last four months”, despite the assertion in her online bio that “my tweets are signed -PH”.
The One Nation leader told Mr Holt on one occasion his questioning was “irrelevant” and she had “a problem answering (his) question”.
She was subsequently chided by Justice Stewart for seeking to clarify the plaintiff’s line of questioning rather than answering to her best ability.
TWEET ABOUT THE QUEEN
Senator Faruqi, the Greens deputy leader, launched defamation proceedings in 2023 against Senator Hanson on the grounds of racial discrimination after the pair clashed online.
Following the death of Queen Elizabeth II on September 9, 2022 Senator Faruqi tweeted: “I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples”.
Senator Hanson tweeted back condemning Senator Faruqi’s statement and telling her to “piss off back to Pakistan”.
Senator Faruqi first took Senator Hanson to the Human Rights Commission over the tweet, before suing the One Nation leader.
The five-day hearing began on Monday before Justice Stewart.
Senator Hanson has enlisted SC Sue Chrysanthou, known for representing former attorney-general Christian Porter and Channel 10’s Lisa Wilkinson. Senator Faruqi’s representation is led by Saul Holt KC, barrister Jessie Taylor and the firm Marque Lawyers.
Appearing in Federal Court as part of Senator Faruqi’s defamation proceedings against Senator Hanson, Deakin University professor Yin Paradies argued that Senator Faruqi’s critique of the British monarchy was not a racial attack.
“I think there’s a difference between critiquing colonisation and being racist to British people,” he said under cross-examination.
“To critique the British Empire is not to critique any particular British person.”
Ms Chrysanthou argued the validity of Professor Paradies’ evidence was “far removed” from the events on trial, given the specific clinical objectives of his research.
She also argued his personal views unfairly aligned with those of Senator Faruqi, citing an Australia Day tweet in which he called the First Fleet “the vanguard of what was and continues to be the most backward ignorant, primitive infantile, selfish, deluded, egoistic, sick and pernicious monoculture that has ever existed”.
Professor Paradies told the court he did not read the news and was not politically vested in either senators Hanson or Faruqi.
In Mr Holt’s opening statement he argued Senator Hanson’s tweet “was making a brown, Muslim migrant into a lesser person”, which precipitated a “torrent of abuse”.
“The tweet added to years and years of experiencing racist speech and racist acts,” he said.
“This was different. It came from a colleague, it came publicly and it unleashed, as she expected it would the moment she saw it, a torrent of abuse.”
Ms Chrysanthou’s responding statement sought to prove Senator Faruqi “intended to elicit a reaction” when she made her initial comments and Senator Hanson was not responsible for the barrage of public comments made against her.
Both senators have partially funded their legal fees through crowd-funding.
Senator Faruqi called for a $150,000 donation from Senator Hanson to the Sweatshop Literacy Movement and an apology among her sought damages.
The trial is primed to end early, with closing statements slated for Wednesday midday.
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