‘Unfair’: Hanson sobs after racist court ruling

Pauline Hanson has broken down in an interview after a court ruled comments she made about a fellow senator were racist.

The One Nation leader posted on Twitter (now X) in 2022 that Mehreen Faruqi should “piss off back to Pakistan” after the Greens senator commented on Queen Elizabeth’s death.

Senator Faruqi said at the time she “cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples”.

In a teary interview with Sky News on Tuesday, Senator Hanson called the Federal Court ruling “unfair and unjust”, lamenting that Australia was “not the country I grew up in”.

“I just feel that the country’s changed so much in such a way that people can’t say what they think anymore. The thought police is out there, everyone’s shut down for having an opinion,” she said between sobs.

“It’s not the country I grew up in.

“People may criticise my comment, but I’ve never changed since the first day of politics nearly 30 years ago.

“But I think the decision made I think was unfair, unjust and a bit hard, but I’m not going to give up, I’m going to appeal against it, I’m going to fight this.”

‘Angry ad hominem attack’

Handing down his the decision on Friday, Justice Angus Stewart labelled the post as “an angry ad hominem attack”.

He ruled the post was “reasonably likely in all the circumstances” to “offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate the applicant and groups of people, namely 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”.

Justice Stewart found that Senator Hanson’s post was motivated by “the race, colour or national or ethnic origin” of Senator Faruqi, and the her response was not made in good faith as a fair comment on a matter of public interest.

“There is also nothing in Senator Hanson’s tweet about the British Empire, stolen lands and wealth of colonised people, a treaty with First Nations, reparations or Australia becoming a republic; the tweet does not try to defend or comment upon British colonial history,” he said.

Justice Stewart said nothing in Senator Hanson’s tweet was responsive to what Senator Faruqi had tweeted.

“It did not call on Senator Faruqi to apologise or to give her wealth away or, in terms, to stop being critical of the British Empire or Australia,” he continued.

“Rather, it told Senator Faruqi to ‘piss off back to Pakistan’.

“Senator Hanson’s tweet was merely an angry ad hominem attack devoid of discernible content (or comment) in response to what Senator Faruqi had said.”