One Nation leader Pauline Hanson is appealing a court ruling that she was racist towards a Greens senator when she told her to pack her bags and go back to Pakistan.
Justice Angus Stewart found Senator Hanson engaged in "seriously offensive" and intimidating behaviour against Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi in a September 2022 social media post that breached the Racial Discrimination Act.
Senator Hanson has filed an appeal with the Federal Court, saying the justice's decision "raised alarm among many Australians that their freedom of speech, the freedom to say what they’re thinking, is constantly under threat".
The appeal is based on allegations the judge erred in admitting evidence of autobiographical affidavits and other reports.
The Queensland senator claims "a large body of thought" believed the Racial Discrimination Act clause she was found to have breached encroached on the implied right of political communication in the constitution.
Senator Hanson said Senator Faruqi should "piss off back to Pakistan" after she wrote on social media platform X she could not mourn the death of a Queen of a "racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples".
Justice Stewart found the post was an "angry personal attack" against Senator Faruqi and "a strong form of racism".
It was a message that Senator Faruqi as an immigrant was a second-class citizen "and that she should be grateful for what she has and keep quiet," he said in his Federal Court ruling.
The decision vindicated herself and those who bore the brunt of "destructive racist language", the Greens senator said after the court ruled in her favour.
The appeal's filing came on the same day that Race Discrimination Commissioner Giridharan Sivaraman released a report detailing that Australia still has a high mountain to climb to remove "entrenched" racism.
The report recommends political accountability and increased racial literacy, including regular anti-racism training for parliamentarians and their staff.
