Australian Politician Loses Appeal Over 'Go Back to Pakistan' Remark

SYDNEY: It's over for Pauline Hanson's appeal. The Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia knocked it down Monday, leaving intact a 2024 finding that the senator racially vilified colleague Mehreen Faruqi.

The trigger goes back to September 2022. Faruqi, born in Pakistan, put up a post after Queen Elizabeth II died she couldn't mourn, she wrote, the "leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised people." Hanson fired back almost immediately. Faruqi had taken every advantage Australia offered, she wrote citizenship, multiple homes, a seat in parliament and still found something to complain about. Then the line that eventually landed her in court: pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan.

A judge ruled against her in 2024. The finding: Hanson's post amounted to a strong form of racism, one reasonably likely to offend or intimidate not just Faruqi, but Muslim Australians and immigrants of colour generally. There's a bigger legal point sitting underneath that ruling. Political speech, the judgment effectively says, doesn't automatically protect comments aimed at someone's race or where they came from. Hanson tried two lines of appeal that she never broke the law, and that the law itself shouldn't stand constitutionally. Monday, both got tossed out.

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She isn't retreating from any of it. Speaking to reporters afterward, Hanson said she'd been incensed at what she saw as disrespect toward the Queen on the day she died. Calling it out, she said, was the entire point.

The timing isn't great optics-wise, though maybe not for Hanson's base. One Nation is polling among Australia's more popular parties right now, per recent surveys riding the same platform as always: hard immigration limits, deportation pledges, calls for stronger free speech laws. She's also floated her own version of Elon Musk's DOGE for government spending cuts, and raised doubts about Australia staying in certain international bodies.

Nearly three years on from that original post, Faruqi finally has closure. What's left is a sharper line drawn in Australia's ongoing fight over where political speech ends and racial vilification begins a line that gets harder to draw when an immigrant