Pauline Hanson ‘shut herself away’ after breaking down on TV over racism judgment

One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has revealed she had to “shut herself away” after breaking down in an emotional TV interview over a racial vilification judgment.

A federal court earlier this month found Ms Hanson racially vilified her Senate colleague Mehreen Faruqi in a September 2022 tweet telling her to “piss off back to Pakistan”.

The comment was in response to an earlier post by the Greens Senator about the death of Queen Elizabeth II, in which Ms Faruqi said she “cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples”.

Ms Faruqi launched legal action and this month Justice Angus Stewart found Ms Hanson’s post was unlawful under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, labelling it an “angry ad hominem attack”.

Ms Hanson intends to appeal the decision, which has left her with a $900,000 legal bill.

In an interview with Sky News host Andrew Bolt after the verdict, Ms Hanson broke down in tears saying Australia was “not the country I grew up in” and that “people can’t say what they think anymore”.

Ms Hanson spoke to Sky News again on Wednesday night, revealing to host Chris Kenny that she was “devastated after the interview with Andrew Bolt”.

“I basically shut myself away for a couple of days,” she said.

“I just had to rebuild my strength and realise, you know, OK, pick yourself up, dust yourself down. I can’t go anywhere. I have to fight this. It’s just not about Pauline Hanson anymore, it’s about people’s freedom of speech in this nation, that we have a right to have an opinion, and every which way they’re trying to shut it down.”

Ms Hanson added the “support that I’ve received from the Australian people has been overwhelming”.

“It’s been astounding,” she said.

“The phones in my office never stopped ringing, either at my parliamentary office or whether it was in the Queensland head office. The letters and wishes of support and prayers, it’s been so welcomed.”

A legal fund launched by One Nation to support Ms Hanson’s appeal has raised more than $650,000.

She said the federal appeals court challenge would not happen until the later half of next year, “possibly around August”.

“So I’ve got to get my team of lawyers together,” she said.

“So if I can win this appeal, if I can get it thrown out, 18C will be thrown out then, and I have to move on.”

She insisted that her tweet had nothing to do with Ms Faruqi’s race or Islamic faith.

“Let me just point out also, that under the 18C, religion doesn’t come into it so her being a Muslim has got absolutely nothing to do with it,” she said.

“So [Justice Stewart] said because she came from Pakistan which is a Muslim country, I was basically having a go at her. I don’t care about a person’s colour of their skin or what religion she was, [it] had nothing to do with it.”

Ms Faruqi had claimed Ms Hanson’s tweet was racially discriminatory and provoked a “torrent of abuse”.

Ms Hanson told Kenny she did not post her reply until several hours later and that there were a lot of messages from other Australians who “also were insulted by her tweet, not me”.

Justice Stewart ruled that the post was reasonably likely to “offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate [Ms Faruqi] 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”.

He found Ms Hanson had posted the tweet “because of the race, colour or national or ethnic origin” of Ms Faruqi, and that the One Nation leader’s response was not made in good faith as a fair comment on a matter of public interest.

“I am comfortably satisfied that both groups of people in Australia that I have identified, being persons of colour who are migrants or of relatively recent migrant heritage and persons of colour who are Muslim, are reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to have been offended (i.e. profoundly and seriously), insulted, humiliated and intimidated by Senator Hanson’s tweet,” Justice Stewart said.

“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.”

Justice Stewart said nothing in Ms Hanson’s tweet was responsive to what Ms 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 said.

“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.”

Justice Stewart said Ms Hanson had given no reasonable justification for publishing “messages that are racist, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim”.

“[Ms Hanson] reverted most easily to those messages when responding to a Muslim, immigrant woman of colour in anger in the heat of the moment, which is consistent with the views that she has espoused publicly for decades,” he said.

Ms Hanson was ordered to delete the post within seven days and cover Ms Faruqi’s legal costs.

Speaking after the judgment, Ms Faruqi said Justice Stewart’s decision “draws a line that hate speech is not free speech”.

“And those who subject people to racial abuse will not get away scot-free,” she said.

“Today’s judgment is landmark, it is historic, and it is groundbreaking and it will set a new precedent with how racism is viewed in this country.”

— with NCA NewsWire