A full bench of the Federal Court of Australia has unanimously dismissed an appeal by right-wing leader Pauline Hanson against a ruling that she racially discriminated against a Muslim senator.
In 2024, Hanson was found to have violated racial discrimination laws after she told Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi to 'pack your bags and p*** off back to Pakistan'. The comment was made in a social media post two years earlier, on the day of Queen Elizabeth II's death, in response to Faruqi's remarks that she could not 'mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples'.
In their ruling on Monday, the three-judge panel said that 'none of the grounds' of appeal had been established, adding that Hanson's comment was unlawful and unprotected by free speech defences.
'Today, justice has prevailed,' Faruqi told reporters outside court in Sydney. 'Today's win is for every single person out there who has been told to go back to where you came from.'
Hanson said she and her legal team would review the decision and intended to lodge an appeal with Australia's High Court. 'Public discussion in Australia has become almost totally silenced by laws and rules which prevent ordinary people expressing their personal views... This has never been, nor ever should be, the Australian way,' Hanson posted on X.
The Full Federal Court agreed with the 2024 judgement, which 'correctly characterised' Hanson's post as containing an anti-Muslim and Islamophobic message and 'being a variant of the historically racist, nativist and anti-immigrant slogan 'go back to where you came from''. The court also noted that the law was constitutionally valid and Hanson did not establish a defence of fair comment on a matter of public interest.
Founded in 1997, One Nation was long seen as a fringe party but Hanson's hard line on immigration has attracted more support in recent polls. Hanson has advocated for an end to multiculturalism in Australia, saying the country should exist as a 'monocultural' society.
Source: www.aljazeera.com