A woke judge has ruled that One Nation leader Pauline Hanson racially vilified far-left Muslim Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi with a tweet telling her to “piss off back to Pakistan” in response to an insulting post after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Federal Court Justice Angus Stewart, a South African immigrant with radical leftist views on race and identity, on Friday handed down his judgement in the Federal Court, ordering Ms Hanson to take down the tweet and pay Ms Faruqi’s court costs, although Ms Hanson said she plans to appeal.
Ms Faruqi, who was allowed to move to Australia from Pakistan in 1992 and was given citizenship just two years later, wrote on X, then-Twitter, on September 9, 2022, about 12 hours after the monarch’s death: “Condolences to those who knew the Queen.
“I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples.
“We are reminded of the urgency of Treaty with First Nations, justice & reparations for British colonies & becoming a republic.”
Your attitude appalls and disgusts me. When you immigrated to Australia you took every advantage of this country. You took citizenship, bought multiple homes, and a job in a parliament. It’s clear you’re not happy, so pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan. -PH https://t.co/zilzUeFGoZ
— Pauline Hanson 🇦🇺 (@PaulineHansonOz) September 9, 2022
Ms Hanson responded in a quote-tweet: “Your attitude appalls and disgusts me. When you immigrated to Australia you took every advantage of this country. You took citizenship, bought multiple homes, and a job in a parliament. It’s clear you’re not happy, so pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan. – PH.”
Ms Faruqi claims the tweet made her cry, caused her to suffer “sleepless nights” and at time wake in “great distress because of the trauma induced by the tweet” as well as giving her a “physiological reaction to going into the Senate chamber”.
She initially went to the Australian Human Rights Commission, but when Ms Hanson declined to participate that complaint was terminated and Ms Faruqi then pursued her claim in the Federal Court, saying that Ms Hanson had engaged in unlawful offensive conduct.
Ms Hanson argued that her tweet was done reasonably and in good faith in making a fair comment on an event and/or matter of public interest, and that it was an expression of her genuine belief – making it exempt from Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (RDA) which outlaws offensive behaviour because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin – and that sections 18C and 18D were invalid as they violated her implied constitutional right to political communication.
She further claimed that she did not know that Ms Faruqi was a Muslim and argued that she only used the phrase “piss off back to Pakistan” because that’s where the Green senator was from, not because of her racial characteristics or religion.
But Justice Stewart rejected Ms Hanson’s arguments, ruling the tweet was a “strong form of racism”, and since it was an “angry ad hominem attack devoid of discernible content (or comment) in response to what Senator Faruqi had said” that it was not reasonable nor in good faith, and was not a fair comment.
He found that the tweet had conveyed racist, anti-immigrant and “islamophobic” messages, writing in his judgement that “piss off back to Pakistan” was a variant of the slogan “go back to where you came from”, which he described as a “racist trope with a long history”.
“It carries with it historical anti-immigrant and nativist beliefs with roots, in Australia, that are traceable to the White Australia Policy,” he said.
According to The Journal of the NSW Bar Association Mr Stewart “acknowledged the traditional custodians of the land on which the ceremony took place and the traditional custodians of the land on which he grew up, the San or Bushmen people” at his ceremonial sitting on being appointed to the Federal Court in 2019.
He then reflected on being “born into privilege” because he was “White, male, able-bodied, cis-gendered and heterosexual” and remarked on not suffering “the discrimination, inequality, marginalisation and disadvantage that people of colour, women, people with disabilities and LGBTQI+ people faced, and still face”.
After the ruling Ms Faruqi, who claimed during the trial that White people could not be the victims of racism, said it would “set a new precedent for how racism is viewed in this country”.
“Today’s ruling tells us that telling someone to ‘go back to where they came from’ is a strong form of racism,” she said.
“It draws a line that hate speech is not free speech and those who subject people to racial abuse will not get away scot-free.”
In July Ms Faruqi sparked anger with an interview where she called on the Australian parliament to get rid of the Lord’s Prayer, and refused to say terrorist group Hamas should be disbanded.
When asked on ABC’s Insiders about her views on plans by Muslim organisation The Muslim Vote to target MPs in Sydney and Melbourne electorates where Christian Australians have been largely replaced by Muslims, Faruqi responded by saying the Lord’s Prayer should be axed.
Pakistan-born Muslim Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi told ABC’s Insiders today that the Australian parliament should get rid of the Lord’s Prayer.https://t.co/XUeNOlMRYn pic.twitter.com/TLP0tUD7Hd
— The Noticer (@NoticerNews) July 7, 2024
“We start our day with the Lord’s Prayer, lets not forget that, as much as I would love for our parliament to be secular, I completely believe in a secular parliament, believe in the separation of church and state,” she said.
“You’d like to get rid of the Lord’s Prayer?” host David Speers asked.
“I would like to get rid of it, because so many people of different faiths and from all over the world live in this country, and that is not representative, parliament is not representative,” Faruqi, who worn a Palestinian scarf to the interview, responded.
MPs have started each parliamentary sitting with the Christian prayer since Federation, although anti-Australian left-wing extremists have made sporadic calls for its removal, with Victorian premier Jacinta Allan saying in January that “cultural diversity” should be reflected in parliamentary practice.
Header image: Left, Pauline Hanson (Facebook). Right, Mehreen Faruqi (Australian Greens website – Australian Greens, CC BY-SA 2.5 AU, via Wikimedia Commons)
