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.”
Chrysanthou said the Queen was “beloved by many”, and Hanson’s tweet was “plainly” about hypocrisy. “The context doesn’t support a racist motive,” she said.
“The likelihood that a senator of the Australian parliament would be intimidated by a tweet in the terms published by my client is absurd. Senator Faruqi used offensive language all the time on Twitter.”
Senator Mehreen Faruqi outside the Federal Court in Sydney last year.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Chrysanthou submitted that the categories of people Stewart found were likely to be offended by the tweet were too broad.
“The notion that a five-line tweet which is a fight between two senators offended … a large number of Australians who are on Twitter makes no sense,” she said.
In his decision last year, Stewart made a declaration that the tweet was “reasonably likely … to offend, insult, humiliate and intimidate” Faruqi, along with “people of colour who are migrants to Australia or … Australians of relatively recent migrant heritage” and “Muslims who are people of colour in Australia”.
He also found the tweet was posted because of Faruqi’s “race, colour or national or ethnic origin”.
Chrsyanthou said Hanson offered “the same or near-identical views” to other Twitter users who responded negatively to Faruqi’s tweet. She said this was relevant to whether the comment fell within a fair comment-style exemption to the racial discrimination laws.
But Justice Geoffrey Kennett, who is hearing the appeal with Justices Melissa Perry and Elizabeth Bennett, said he was “not sure it would have made a difference”.
“If your client’s contravened the [Racial Discrimination] Act … the fact that other people did so as well isn’t necessarily relevant as far as I can see,” he said.
Pauline Hanson and her barrister, Sue Chrysanthou, SC, outside the Federal Court in Sydney on Monday.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Chrysanthou replied: “The court can’t sit in an ivory tower and assess [the comment] … to be offensive or insulting or humiliating or intimidatory without looking at the context in which people engage in discussion in 2022 when this publication was made.
“What your honours might consider … [not to] be acceptable discourse at an afternoon tea or in a court or in a meeting of a knitting club is not equivalent to the way that Australians engage on social media.”
Perry replied: “[A] certain sector of Australians, let’s be clear about that.”
But Chrysanthou said the social media platform was “overwhelmingly a place where people feel free to express themselves in ways … they might not do in person”.
Hanson is reagitating her argument that the Racial Discrimination Act provisions fell foul of the implied freedom of political communication in the Commonwealth Constitution. Stewart disagreed with that proposition.
The hearing continues.
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