‘Not just garden-variety racism’: Pauline Hanson under fire in court battle

3 months ago 8

A tweet by Pauline Hanson that is at the centre of a long-running racial vilification case was “not just garden-variety racism” but Islamophobic, an appeal court has heard.

The One Nation leader and Queensland senator is seeking to overturn a Federal Court ruling last year that she breached the Racial Discrimination Act in a post on Twitter, now X, telling Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi to “piss off back to Pakistan”.

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson and barrister Sue Chrysanthou, SC, arrive at the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday.

Hanson’s three-day appeal is being heard by the Full Court of the Federal Court. Her barrister, Sue Chrysanthou, SC, argued on Monday that the context of the tweet “doesn’t support a racist motive”.

In a decision in November last year, 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 also found the tweet suggested Faruqi, an Australian citizen and Muslim who migrated from Pakistan in 1992, was a “second-class citizen”, as well as conveying anti-Muslim and Islamophobic sentiment.

On Tuesday, Faruqi’s barrister, Jessie Taylor, submitted that the One Nation founder’s identity was central to how the post should be interpreted.

The tweet at the centre of the Federal Court case.

The court heard Hanson supported a ban on Muslim immigration, described Islam in 2017 as “a disease” and promoted the hashtag “Pray4MuslimBan” on social media.

“A tweet from Pauline Hanson that ends in ‘piss off back to Pakistan’ can and must be construed not just as garden-variety racism based on colour, ethnicity and national origin, but also as Islamophobic and deeply hostile toward the Muslim part of Senator Faruqi’s identity,” Taylor said.

She argued the One Nation founder’s “hostility toward Muslims and those she perceives as foreigners is so ubiquitous, so notorious, so prolific ... and so ‘on-brand’ for Senator Hanson” that the tweet could only be interpreted as an attack on Faruqi’s whole identity.

Hanson’s ‘pack your bags’ tweet

Hanson’s tweet in September 2022 was a response to a post by Faruqi, 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”.

‘She uses white Australians and ordinary Australians as synonyms, placing non-white Australians squarely into the category of ‘the other’.’

Barrister Jessie Taylor, acting for Mehreen Faruqi, on Pauline Hanson’s commentary.

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.”

During the trial last year, Faruqi’s legal team relied on evidence, ultimately accepted by Justice Angus Stewart, that Hanson had a tendency to make “hateful” statements about migrants, people of colour and Muslims.

Was the tweet anti-Muslim?

As part of her appeal, Hanson’s legal team alleges Stewart was wrong to conclude the tweet was anti-Muslim and Islamophobic.

But Taylor submitted on Tuesday that there was “no doubt ... Senator Faruqi’s status as a Muslim as well as a brown South Asian migrant both motivated Senator Hanson’s tweet and affected how Senator Faruqi received it”.

Senator Mehreen Faruqi and her lawyer Michael Bradley leaving the Federal Court in Sydney after her victory last year.

“You’ll see clearly ... that Senator Hanson does not direct her invective to British or Kiwi or Irish or American or French immigrants,” Taylor said of the evidence before Stewart.

“She directs it, by name, to Asians, Indians, Muslims – interchangeably with terrorists, I might add, and I do wish I was joking – people who don’t speak English, don’t ‘fit in’,” Taylor said.

“She uses white Australians and ordinary Australians as synonyms, placing non-white Australians squarely into the category of ‘the other’.”

Taylor said Hanson’s “hatred and hostility toward outsiders is not divided cleanly along the lines of race, colour, ethnicity and national ethnic origin, or religion”.

“She didn’t look at Senator Faruqi and see one attribute at a time, and for that reason, among others, his honour was absolutely right to find [the tweet conveyed three meanings, including an anti-Muslim, Islamophobic sentiment].”

Saul Holt, KC, also acting for Faruqi, submitted that Stewart was also correct to find Hanson could not avail herself of a fair comment-style exemption to the racial vilification laws.

The tweet “failed on the most basic hurdle of reasonableness”, Holt said.

Sera Mirzabegian, SC, acting for the nation’s Race Discrimination Commissioner, also made submissions in the case about “how, and to what extent, a person with Muslim identity” is protected by the racial discrimination laws. The commissioner supports the findings made by Stewart.

The hearing continues.