Pauline Hanson Referred to the Human Rights Commission After Racist Tirade

Queensland senator Pauline Hanson has been referred to the Human Rights Commission after she ended a broad-sided defence of racist comments directed at another senator, who she told to “piss off back to Pakistan”, with an offer to take them “to the airport”.

Hanson launched into the tirade after the Greens tabled a motion calling on the Senate to censure the One Nation leader for racist, “anti-migrant” comments directed at senator Mehreen Faruqi in the wake of Queen Elizabeth II’s death.

Earlier this month, Faruqi offered her condolences to those “who knew the Queen”, but said she couldn’t mourn “the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples”.

In a reply on Twitter, Hanson claimed Faruqi had taken “every advantage of this country” when she “immigrated to Australia”, before telling her to pack her bags and “piss off back to Pakistan”. The tweet was signed off “-PH”, signalling that Hanson had personally written and posted the remarks from her official account.

Faruqi said the censure was the “bare minimum” that could be done. She said the tweet opened the door to an onslaught of harassment.

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In a speech of her own, Hanson refused to retract the racist comments, before levelling a minutes-long diatribe at the Greens that included a definition of racism Hanson insisted she didn’t fit, before accusing the party of hypocrisy, citing allegations against Faruqi’s party colleague, Greens senator Lidia Thorpe.

“Criticism is not racism,” said Hanson, for the umpteenth time in her political career. As she wrapped up her speech, a Senate colleague could be heard branding her an “absolute scumbag” from across the chamber.

The One Nation leader has a chequered track record on racism, stretching all the way back to her maiden speech to parliament back in 1996, where she ranted about the “reverse racism” that offers Indigenous people of Australia “privileges…over other Australians”.

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