In a heated exchange, Senator Fatima Payman sent her nemesis, Pauline Hanson home for the Christmas holidays with a bang | Samanatha Maiden

The extraordinary stoush over Fatima Payman’s citizenship sparked by Pauline Hanson resulted in chaotic scenes, writes Samantha Maiden.

Perhaps moved by the poignancy of never seeing Pauline Hanson’s face again until after the election, former WA Labor Senator Fatima Payman sent her nemesis home for the Christmas holidays with a bang this week.

The One Nation leader Pauline Hanson was a “disgrace to the human race” she suggested, amid chaotic scenes which culminated in independent senator Lidia Thorpe getting involved in the verbal melee, before flipping the bird in the chamber.

Senator Pauline Hanson and Senator Fatima Payman in the Senate at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

The image of Senator Thorpe storming out in heels with one finger unmistakably in the air was duly captured by a veteran photographer.

“Senator Hanson has worn the burqa in this place, maybe it’s time that she packs her burqa, and goes to Afghanistan, and talks to the Taliban about this,” Senator Payman told parliament.

Which, as an aside, is one of the freshest reality TV concepts that has come across most TV executive’s desks in a while.

“You’re not just vindictive, mean, nasty – you bring disgrace to the human race,” Senator Payman added.

But when Senator Hanson stood up to demand that the burqa comments be withdrawn things heated up. Senator Thorpe then yelled across the chamber: “You’re a convicted racist!”

Merry Christmas everyone!

Senator Payman was responding in part to Senator Hanson’s claim that her citizenship documentation was “not good enough, it would not be good enough for anyone else here in this place”.

Senator Payman has held Australian citizenship since 2005. In addition, she still holds citizenship of Afghanistan, despite having attempted to renounce it in 2021.

If you’re wondering if two citizenships might be a little problemo you would be correct.

Senator Hanson has made multiple attempts to question Ms Payman’s citizenship in the past, she says, including writing to the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. But nothing has happened.

Senator Pauline Hanson and Senator Fatima Payman in the Senate at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“If she’d been elected in 2016 instead of 2022, she would have been referred to the High Court like all the others,” she argued.

Senator Payman then told parliament the One Nation leader had “no dignity whatsoever as a senator”.

“I am very honoured that I live rent free in Senator Hanson’s mind, but I think you’ve got better things to do than worry about Section 44,’’ she said.

But does Senator Hanson have a point? Is there a question mark over Senator Payman’s constitutional right to sit in parliament ? Possibly.

Some constitutional experts have previously suggested that her inability to renounce her Afghan citizenship is “unprecedented”.

Labor sought advice and declared there was no issue when she was a candidate and then started grumbling action Section 44 risks when she went to the crossbench.

Constitutional expert Anne Twomey has previously suggested that while the chance of the matter ending up in court before Senator Payman next faced the polls was “very low”, there was “no precedent” for her case.

“The problem is that we don’t actually really know what the answer is, because the High Court’s never had this case actually come before it in practical terms. So there’s no actual precedent on it,” she said.

“She probably has a good claim to say that she’s not disqualified, but no one could say that with absolute certainty.”

Before entering parliament, Senator Payman declared she had tried. She had taken reasonable steps to renounce her Afghan citizenship but was unsuccessful because of the Taliban.

Senator Pauline Hanson and Senator Fatima Payman in the Senate at Parliament House. Picture: NewsWire / Martin Ollman

“In light of the situation in ­Afghanistan and the impossibility of progressing my application to renounce Afghan citizenship following the recent takeover by the Taliban, I am not disqualified … so I can nominate as a candidate,” she wrote.

Professor Twomey has written it was unlikely for anyone in parliament to refer the senator, because the major parties had agreed after the section 44 crisis in 2017 that unless someone had outright lied about their citizenship, no referral would be made.

Meanwhile, on the same morning all of that was going on, Pauline Hanson’s legal team 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.

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 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 Chrysanthou, 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.

Is it too soon to suggest that One Nation’s Pauline Hanson and Senators Faruqi and Thorpe are simply not each other’s cup of tea?

Originally published as In a heated exchange, Senator Fatima Payman sent her nemesis, Pauline Hanson home for the Christmas holidays with a bang | Samanatha Maiden