Senator Pauline Hanson faces trial for alleged racist discrimination against Senator Mehreen Faruqi. Image source: jfish92, via Wikimedia Commons.
Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi has launched a defamation trial against One Nation leader Pauline Hanson over allegations of racist discrimination.
The Federal Court of Australia heard evidence that Hanson is a “well-known, long-standing, and prolific sayer of racist things” on Monday 29 April.
The conflict between the senators began on 9 September 2022 after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Faruqi said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) she could not “mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples”.
Hanson responded in a quote-tweet telling Faruqi to “pack [her] bags and piss off back to Pakistan”.
Faruqi claims Hanson violated section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, under which it is unlawful for a person to commit a public act that is reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate, or intimidate another person or group on the basis of race, colour, or ethnic origin.
Faruqi’s legal representative Saul Holt argued Hanson’s response was made in public on the basis of race and was offensive, insulting, and humiliating to its recipient and to “others who have the same… or share some characteristics with her”.
He described Hanson’s tweet as a variation on the “well-known anti-migrant, racist, nativist phrase ‘go back to where you came from’”.
“The examination of Senator Hanson’s tendency to be racist and to say racist things over decades lead inextricably to the conclusion that this wasn’t just said because Faruqi was a migrant,” said Holt in his opening statement.
“Rather it was said at least in part because Senator Faruqi is a Muslim, non-white, and from an Asian country.”
Holt added the One Nation senator’s post “predictably” led to a “torrent of abuse” from other users.
Hanson’s lawyer Sue Chrysanthou told the court that the online backlash against Faruqi “arose and started because of her tweet, not my client’s”.
Chrysanthou argued Faruqi “engaged in hypocrisy” because the Greens senator had previously sworn allegiance to Queen Elizabeth II when she was appointed to the Senate in 2018.
Faruqi has requested for the court to order Hanson to donate $150,000 to a charity of the Greens senator’s choice and publish a new tweet that acknowledges the One Nation senator “committed unlawful offensive behaviour” which must be pinned to her profile for three months.
