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Mehreen Faruqi's trial against Pauline Hanson begins

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Monday, April 29, 2024

A racial discrimination trial against Australian politician Pauline Hanson launched by Pakistani-born Australian Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi has begun. The trial involves a tweet made by Hanson that said Faruqi should "pack her bags and piss off to Pakistan." Faruqi claims Hanson violated section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 by posting this tweet.

Hanson posted the tweet on September 8, 2022, the day Queen Elizabeth II died. The tweet was posted in response to Faruqi's preceding tweet, in which she called for a treaty with Indigenous Australians and said that she could not mourn "the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land, and wealth of colonised people." Hanson's legal representative, Sue Chrysanthou, argued that Faruqi's tweet was intended to "offend and provoke a response."

Faruqi's lawyer, Sam Holt, has told the court that they will attempt to prove the comment was racially motivated by citing Hanson's history of saying "racist things." "The examination of Senator Hanson's tendency to be racist, and to say racist things over decades leads inextricably to the conclusion that this wasn't just said because Senator Faruqi was a migrant ... rather it was said at least in part because Senator Faruqi is a Muslim, non-white, and from an Asian country," Holt argued.

Faruqi's legal team further argued that Hanson's tweet was "not limited to the persons to who its directed at" but also resulted in "vicarious racism" against fellow non-white Muslims. Holt told the court that Hanson's tweet "predictably" resulted in a series of tweets expressing a similar sentiment. He read multiple replies to Hanson's tweet to the court, including one which said: "Well done Pauline, make sure she gets on that plane, or she might slip out the back."

Chrysanthou said that Faruqi's tweet had already been criticised by many in the media and online, five hours before Hanson posted her tweet. "The barrage arose and started because of her tweet, not my client's tweet," Chrysanthou told the court. "If the person enters the affray in such a provocative way, they expect and seek out a response."

Hanson's lawyer will seek to prove Faruqi is "a hypocrite and only against certain forms of racism." The court heard that Faruqi is not seeking damages but is asking the court to order Hanson to donate to a charity, attend a course, delete the original tweet and publish a new post acknowledging she has "committed unlawful offensive behaviour" and pin it to her profile for three months.


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