Pauline Hanson says free speech is being stifled in Australia as she loses racial discrimination court case over telling Mehreen Faruqi to ‘p*** off back to Pakistan’
Pauline Hanson has lost an appeal against a court ruling that found she made a racist remark against Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi – with the One Nation leader now warning she may take the case to the High Court.
Senator Hanson was found in 2024 to have racially vilified deputy Senate leader Faruqi by telling her to ‘p*** off back to Pakistan’ in a tweet posted shortly after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
In his Federal Court decision handed down in 2024, Justice Angus Stewart ruled the remark was ‘seriously offensive’ and a ‘strong form of racism’.
Hanson launched an appeal against the finding, with her barrister arguing the remarks might not have been pleasant, but they did not intimidate people of colour.
The appeal was dismissed by the Full Court of the Federal Court on Monday, nearly four years after the social media post that landed the firebrand politician in a storm.
It came in response to a post on X, formerly Twitter, from Faruqi on the day of the Queen’s death, in which she offered her condolences to those who knew the monarch.
But she added she could not mourn the passing of the leader of a ‘racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples’.
In a heated retort, Hanson said she was appalled and disgusted by Faruqi’s comments.
One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has failed to quash a court ruling that she made a racist remark online after telling Mahreen Faruqi to ‘p*** off back to Pakistan’
‘When you immigrated to Australia, you took every advantage of this country,’ she wrote.
‘It’s clear you’re not happy, so pack your bags and p*** off back to Pakistan.’
In a jubilant statement outside court on Monday, Faruqi said she will be seeking costs against Hanson, and told her supporters ‘when we fight, we win’.
In a statement, Hanson said she and her legal team will closely review the decision in the coming days ‘with a view to commencing an appeal in the High Court of Australia’.
Hanson said free speech is being stifled in Australia.
‘Public discussion in Australia has become almost totally silenced by laws and rules which prevent ordinary people expressing their personal views in case some small part of our society takes some sort of offence or feels hurt or “distressed”.
‘This has never been, nor ever should be, the Australian way. We all need to have the courage – and the freedom – to say what we think on issues that are important to us all.
‘Some of those views may not be what certain people would like to hear, but that doesn’t mean that they are not valid views, and it certainly doesn’t mean that people should be prevented from having a voice on topics which are critical to our country’s future.
‘I was incensed by the incredible disrespect that I felt was shown to our late Queen on the day of her death by Senator Fahruqi and others. I simply wanted to call that out.
‘If people in Australia are scared or forbidden to freely express themselves, then those values are eroded. I am here to fight for all Australians to ensure that such a dark day never comes.’
The social media stoush isn’t the only time the two politicians have clashed, with some of Hanson’s more eye-catching stunts in the Senate drawing her colleague’s ire.
The Greens senator accused the right-winger of blatant racism and Islamophobia when the latter wore a burqa into Parliament, just days after the appeal hearing in November.
It was the second time Hanson had pulled the burqa stunt.
The 72-year-old has recently come under fire since returning from a European trip, where she was seen holidaying in Italy with billionaire donor Gina Rinehart.
Hanson also met with anti-immigration activist and convicted criminal Tommy Robinson and told a conservative conference Australia had been flooded with migrants.
Since returning, she has attracted criticism for describing domestic violence as a ‘two-way street’ in comments she insists have been taken out of context.
A Roy Morgan poll published on Tuesday showed her anti-immigration party’s primary vote dipped by more than five percentage points to 22.5 per cent in the space of a week.
