Not a ‘knitting club’: Hanson’s barrister defends One Nation leader

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A tweet by Pauline Hanson telling Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi to “piss off back to Pakistan” might not have been acceptable at “a meeting of a knitting club” but it was not racist, the One Nation senator’s barrister has told a court.

Hanson is seeking to overturn a Federal Court ruling last year that she contravened section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act when she made the comment about Faruqi in a post on Twitter, now X, on September 9, 2022.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson arrives at the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday.

Justice Angus Stewart found the post was a variant of the racist trope “go back to where you came from”. He ordered Hanson to delete the post and to pay Faruqi’s legal costs, likely in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Stewart found the tweet suggested Faruqi, an Australian citizen who migrated from Pakistan in 1992, was a “second-class citizen” as an immigrant.

The Full Court of the Federal Court started hearing Hanson’s three-day appeal in Sydney on Monday.

Social media ‘often offensive’

Sue Chrysanthou, SC, acting for the One Nation leader, said public discourse on social media in Australia was “often abrupt, and rude, and offensive”, and both senators were seasoned politicians with a public platform.

She noted Faruqi had suggested in a 2019 tweet that then-prime minister Scott Morrison should “just f--- off”.

Hanson’s comment 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 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.”

Chrysanthou said the Queen was “beloved by many”, and Hanson’s tweet was “plainly” about hypocrisy. “The context doesn’t support a racist motive,” she said.

“The likelihood that a senator of the Australian parliament would be intimidated by a tweet in the terms published by my client is absurd. Senator Faruqi used offensive language all the time on Twitter.”

Hypocrisy claim ‘is racist’

But barrister Jessie Taylor, acting for Faruqi, said it appeared that Hanson “does not appreciate that the accusation of hypocrisy is itself racist”, rooted in the “exclusion and de-legitimisation of ‘the outsider’.”

“It disentitles an ‘upstart migrant’ from deviating an inch from eternal and unfailing gratitude to her adopted home,” Taylor said.

In Hanson’s eyes, Taylor suggested, Faruqi as a “brown, Muslim, Pakistani woman” was “not afforded the same luxury” of expressing her views.

Hanson’s fixation with hypocrisy was “clearly driven by her very consciously held opinions … on race, immigration, Islam … even if she doesn’t see the nexus” between the two, Taylor said.

Senator Mehreen Faruqi outside the Federal Court in Sydney last year.

Earlier on Monday, Chrysanthou submitted that the categories of people Stewart found were likely to be offended by the tweet were too broad.

“The notion that a five-line tweet which is a fight between two senators offended … a large number of Australians who are on Twitter makes no sense,” she said.

In his decision last year, Stewart made a declaration that the tweet was “reasonably likely … to offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate” Faruqi, along with “people of colour who are migrants to Australia or … Australians of relatively recent migrant heritage” and “Muslims who are people of colour in Australia”.

He also found the tweet was posted because of Faruqi’s “race, colour or national or ethnic origin”.

Chrsyanthou said Hanson offered “the same or near-identical views” to other Twitter users who responded negatively to Faruqi’s tweet.

But Justice Geoffrey Kennett, who is hearing the appeal with Justices Melissa Perry and Elizabeth Bennett, said he was “not sure it would have made a difference”.

“If your client’s contravened the [Racial Discrimination] Act … the fact that other people did so as well isn’t necessarily relevant as far as I can see,” he said.

Chrysanthou replied: “The court can’t sit in an ivory tower and assess [the comment] … to be offensive or insulting or humiliating or intimidatory without looking at the context.

Pauline Hanson and her barrister, Sue Chrysanthou, SC, outside the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday.

“What your honours might consider … [not to] be acceptable discourse at an afternoon tea or in a court or in a meeting of a knitting club is not equivalent to the way that Australians engage on social media.”

Perry replied: “[A] certain sector of Australians, let’s be clear about that.”

But Chrysanthou said the social media platform was “overwhelmingly a place where people feel free to express themselves in ways … they might not do in person”.

She submitted the comment also fell within a fair comment-style exemption to the racial discrimination laws.

Hanson is also reagitating her argument that the Racial Discrimination Act provisions fell foul of the implied freedom of political communication in the Commonwealth Constitution.

The hearing continues.