‘Piss Off Back to Pakistan’: Pauline Hanson’s Post Was Racism, Australia’s Court Confirms
Australia’s Full Federal Court on July 27, 2026, unanimously dismissed One Nation leader Pauline Hanson’s appeal, upholding a finding that her reply telling Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi to ‘piss off back to Pakistan’ was unlawful racial discrimination. Three judges rejected her claim that a post on X was shielded by free speech, affirming that a sitting politician can be held to account for racist hate online.
An Australian court has upheld that a racist message sent by one senator to another on social media broke the law. On July 27, 2026, the Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia unanimously dismissed an appeal by Pauline Hanson, the leader of the hard-right One Nation party, against a 2024 finding that a post she directed at Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi was unlawful under the Racial Discrimination Act, Al Jazeera reported.
A reply on X, and a two-year fight
The exchange dates to September 2022. After the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Faruqi, who was born in Pakistan, posted on X, then known as Twitter, that she could not “mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples,” according to Al Jazeera. Hanson replied: “When you immigrated to Australia you took every advantage of this country ... It’s clear you’re not happy, so pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan.”
Faruqi brought a case under the Racial Discrimination Act. In 2024, a Federal Court judge, Angus Stewart, found that the post breached the law because it was reasonably likely to offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate Faruqi, as well as Muslim Australians and people of colour who had migrated to the country, and ordered Hanson to delete the post and pay Faruqi’s legal costs, Al Jazeera reported.
The court rejects a free-speech defense
Hanson had argued on appeal that the law should not reach political speech, which is protected under an implied freedom of political communication in Australia’s Constitution. The three-judge panel rejected that argument. It said the 2024 judgment had “correctly characterised” Hanson’s post as containing an anti-Muslim and Islamophobic message and as “a variant of the historically racist, nativist and anti-immigrant slogan ‘go back to where you came from’,” according to Al Jazeera.
The Full Court found the post was reasonably likely to have been “profoundly and seriously offensive, insulting, humiliating and intimidating” to Faruqi and to “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,” Australia’s Human Rights Commission said. The court held that the legislation was constitutionally valid and did not impermissibly burden political speech.
‘Held accountable for the vile racism’
Speaking outside court, Faruqi called the outcome a vindication. “Hate speech is not free speech, and the Federal Court has reaffirmed that today,” she said, adding that the ruling ran to “434 paragraphs… confirming that indeed Pauline Hanson behaved in racism, Islamophobia, and hate,” Al Jazeera reported.
Australia’s Race Discrimination Commissioner, Giridharan Sivaraman, who appeared in the case as a friend of the court, called it “a landmark decision.” “The Court has now provided much-needed clarity, strengthening protections against racism and helping build a more inclusive Australia, one where we are all safe and respected,” he said, describing it as “a particularly important decision at a time of alarming increases in racism towards migrants,” according to the commission.
A politician on the rise, and a High Court threat
Hanson said her legal team would review the decision with a view to lodging a further appeal to the High Court of Australia, the country’s final court of appeal, Al Jazeera reported. The dispute plays out as One Nation, the hard-right party Hanson founded three decades ago, has risen in national opinion polls after long sitting on the political fringe, Bloomberg reported.
For now, the ruling stands as one of the clearest statements yet from an Australian court that a racist message posted to a social platform can carry legal consequences, even for an elected lawmaker, and that the reach of free-speech protections stops short of unlawful racial abuse.