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One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has foreshadowed a potential High Court appeal after failing to overturn a damning decision that she racially vilified Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi by telling her to “piss off back to Pakistan”.
In a decision on Monday, the Full Court of the Federal Court rejected Hanson’s appeal against a decision of Justice Angus Stewart in 2024 that her post on Twitter, now X, breached race discrimination laws and was anti-Muslim.
Faruqi said after the appeal decision that “justice has prevailed” and her “win is for every single person out there who has been told to go back to where you came from”.
She said the comment was “the ultimate racist slur, and the court agrees with that”.
Faruqi said hate speech was being normalised in Australia amid the rise of the far right, and she would not be a bystander. The ruling showed “we can fight back, and we can win”, she said.
Marque Lawyers managing partner Michael Bradley, who acted for Faruqi, said the decision was a complete victory for, and vindication of, the Greens deputy leader.
Faruqi launched proceedings against Hanson under racial discrimination laws after the comment was posted online on September 9, 2022.
Hanson’s comment was a response to a post by the Greens senator in which she 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.”
In its decision on Monday, the appeal court said Stewart had found Hanson’s post had “a particular resonance to those who are not white and were therefore subject to the kind of anti-immigrant and nativist beliefs that found expression in the White Australia policy”.
The comment conveyed a “strong form of racism”, Stewart said in a summary of his decision in 2024. Justices Melissa Perry, Geoffrey Kennett and Elizabeth Bennett found no error in his characterisation of the post.
Hanson said in a statement that she was “disappointed” with the outcome of the appeal and would review the decision with her legal team “with a view to commencing an appeal in the High Court”.
Stewart said in his decision in 2024 that Hanson’s post conveyed three interrelated messages, including 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”.
The judge said expert evidence in the trial established that Hanson’s comment, which he described as a variant of the slogan “go back to where you came from”, was “a racist trope with a long history”.
The post was also anti-Muslim and Islamophobic, Stewart said. He ordered Hanson to delete the post and pay Faruqi’s legal costs.
In her statement after the appeal decision, Hanson said she was “incensed by the incredible disrespect that I felt was shown to our late Queen on the day of her death by Senator Faruqi and others” and she “simply wanted to call that out”.
Faruqi alleged Hanson’s post contravened section 18C of 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”.
“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.
Hanson’s barrister, Sue Chrysanthou, SC, submitted during the appeal that “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”.
“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.”
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