By Michaela Whitbourn and Sarah McPhee
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson racially vilified Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi in a tweet telling her to “piss off back to Pakistan”, the Federal Court has ruled.
In a summary of his judgment on Friday, Justice Angus Stewart described the post on Twitter, now X, as an “angry personal attack” that conveyed a “strong form of racism”.
Senator Mehreen Faruqi leaves the Federal Court on Friday.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Faruqi launched proceedings against Hanson under racial discrimination laws after the tweet was posted on September 9, 2022.
Stewart said Hanson’s post “conveyed three essential and interrelated messages, all directed to Senator Faruqi’s status as being from somewhere else”.
The first was that Faruqi, an Australian citizen who migrated from Pakistan in 1992, was a “second-class citizen” as an immigrant, who should be “grateful for what she has and keep quiet”.
Second, it was a “variant of the slogan, ‘go back to where you came from’,” Stewart said.
“The expert evidence establishes that that is a racist trope with a long history. It is a strong form of racism.”
And third, the tweet was anti-Muslim and Islamophobic.
Stewart ordered Hanson to delete the post and pay Faruqi’s legal costs, likely in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Hanson was “deeply disappointed” and would lodge an appeal, a statement posted on her social media said.
Speaking outside court, Faruqi said the decision was a “warning to people like Senator Hanson and others that they will be held accountable for the hate speech that comes out of their mouths”.
‘This ruling draws a line that hate speech is not free speech.’
Senator Mehreen Faruqi
“It is also an affirmation for migrants that people of colour do not have to be grateful or keep quiet,” she said.
“This ruling draws a line that hate speech is not free speech.”
Faruqi’s lawyer, Marque Lawyers managing partner Michael Bradley, said the judge had made “quite stark and clear findings about Senator Hanson’s long-standing behaviour”.
Faruqi, deputy leader of the federal parliamentary Australian Greens, had sought additional orders requiring Hanson to attend anti-racism training at her own cost and to make a $150,000 donation to a charity chosen by Faruqi.
Senator Pauline Hanson said she would appeal the ruling. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
But Stewart said that “it is not at all clear that Senator Hanson would benefit from such training” and “futility” was a “relevant factor to be taken into account”, and “there is no evidence about the intended beneficiary” of a donation.
Hanson’s comment was a response to a post by the Greens senator, who had noted the death of Queen Elizabeth and said she could not “mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples”.
Hanson replied: “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 alleged 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 her and others, and it was done because of Faruqi’s race, colour or national or ethnic origin.
Stewart declared the post was unlawful. He found it was reasonably likely to have been “profoundly and seriously offensive, insulting, humiliating and intimidating … to the reasonable targeted person in the position of Senator Faruqi” as well as to “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”.
The tweet at the centre of the Federal Court case.Credit: Twitter/X
“Based on frequent public statements made by Senator Hanson over nearly three decades, the court has found that Senator Hanson has a tendency to make negative, derogatory, discriminating or hateful statements in relation to, about or against … persons of colour, migrants to Australia and Muslims, and to do so because of those characteristics,” the judge said.
He rejected Hanson’s claim she did not know at the time of the tweet that Faruqi was Muslim.
The judge said there may be cases in which “something highly offensive, insulting … is said about a Muslim or group of Muslims, but not because of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin”, which may not fall foul of the Racial Discrimination Act.
But he said that “in the Australian context, to be Islamophobic is almost invariably also to be racist, and in this specific context it was”.
Hanson’s legal team had argued the comment was not racist and in any case 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”.
The “angry personal attack” did not fall within that exemption, Stewart concluded.
Hanson’s barrister Kieran Smark SC also argued the Racial Discrimination Act provisions fell foul of the implied freedom of political communication in the Commonwealth Constitution. Stewart disagreed.
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