Australian senator told she broke race law in Twitter comment
Pauline Hanson told a Pakistan-born senator to return to her homeland after comment on death of Queen.
An Australian judge has ruled that anti-immigration party leader Senator Pauline Hanson breached racial discrimination laws by crudely telling Pakistan-born Senator Mehreen Faruqi to return to her homeland.
Ms Faruqi sued Ms Hanson in the Federal Court over a 2022 exchange on the social media platform X, then called Twitter, under a provision of the Racial Discrimination Act that bans public actions and statements that offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate people because of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin.
Following the news that Queen Elizabeth II had died, Ms Faruqi, deputy leader of the Australian Greens party, posted: “I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonized peoples.”
The 70-year-old leader of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party replied that Ms Faruqi had immigrated to take “advantage” of Australia, and told the Lahore-born Muslim to return to Pakistan, using an expletive.
Ms Hanson has been known for her views on race since her first speech to Parliament in 1996 in which she warned Australia was “in danger of being swamped by Asians” because of the nation’s non-discriminatory immigration policy.
She once wore a burqa in the Senate as part of a campaign to have Islamic face coverings banned.
