Free speech is dead. There is no justice. We are not the nation the ANZACs fought for.
These are the only conclusions that can be drawn from Senator Pauline Hanson’s court loss to the radical Greens deputy leader Senator Mehreen Faruqi.
Here’s what happened.
Upon the death of the Queen in 2022, Faruqi posted on Twitter (now X):
“Condolences to those who knew the Queen. I cannot mourn the leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples. We are reminded of the urgency of Treaty with First Nations, justice & reparations for British colonies & becoming a republic.”
Hanson responded with:
“Your attitude appalls and disgusts me. When you immigrated to Australia you took every advantage of this country. You took citizenship, bought multiple homes, and a job in a parliament. It’s clear you’re not happy, so pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan - PH.”
Working herself into a self-righteous huff, Faruqi sued Hanson for “racial vilification” under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, legislation widely seen as anti-free speech and in need of repeal.
Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott must be ruing the day his government, while under enormous pressure from woke elites, dropped plans to amend 18C so free speech could be restored.
Yesterday a federal court judge ruled that Senator Hanson was guilty of vilification and ordered her to pull down her post from X and to pay Senator Faruqi’s legal bills.
Hanson says she will appeal, citing freedom of political communication – a right the High Court has said is implied in the Constitution.
Faruqi’s comments about the late Queen are of course highly offensive to patriotic Australians and they are untrue and bigoted.
The Queen did not preside over an Empire, racist or otherwise. The Commonwealth of Nations contains hundreds of millions of people of non-white ethnicities who despite the former status of their nations as British colonies, love the British Royal Family.
Even in the age of Empire, Christian Britian abolished the slave trade while Faruqi’s co-religionists in the Islamic world did not.
Faruqi clearly hates modern Australia and wants it to pay reparations to indigenous people, something Australians overwhelmingly rejected as part of the Voice referendum last year.
While indelicately expressed in the Australian vernacular, Hanson’s sentiments towards Faruqi are entirely reasonable.
In a free society, these matters should be able to be debated, even robustly.
But our regime of deeply flawed state and federal anti-vilification laws can be weaponised against ordinary Australians who rightly push back on elite orthodoxy which ironically vilifies the nation we love.
Faruqi is a radical who wants to trash our cultural heritage by removing the Lord’s Prayer from Parliament.
She is also an anti-Semite, appearing in a picture on social media next to a sign with the Israeli flag being placed in a bin with the caption “keep the world clean”, implying the need for ethnic cleansing.
She refused to vote against a motion condemning the genocidal slogan “from the river to the sea” and she also refused to say whether the atrocity-committing terrorist organisation Hamas should be dismantled.
Faruqi seems to loathe who we are. Hanson is right to say to people like her “if you don’t like Australia, leave”.
The Racial Discrimination Act needs urgent overhaul as do state-based anti-discrimination laws.
It’s too easy for the enemies of mainstream commonsense Australians to weaponise these laws against us.
I’m currently tied up in a four-and-a-half-year legal battle with two gender fluid and sexualised drag queens who have sued me for saying they are dangerous role models for children, which they are.
Despite winning my case they have appealed, and an expensive legal process drags on with no end in sight.
My friend Kirralie Smith of the advocacy group Binary had the police turn up at her home and serve her papers because she called out a biological male playing soccer against females.
Sadly, Australia’s politicians don’t seem to have the courage to have a fight with the woke elites who protect these laws.
It is why Family First is building a political alternative that will do what gutless politicians won’t - fight for the restoration of freedom of speech.
The ANZACs would expect no less.
ACTION: Join the fight for freedom of speech. Join the Family First Party today.