SYDNEY: An Australian court rejected on Monday an appeal from right-wing leader Pauline Hanson to overturn a ruling that she racially discriminated against a Muslim senator by telling her to “piss off back to Pakistan”.

The three-judge panel of the Full Federal Court of Australia unanimously upheld a 2024 ruling that the comment, addressed to Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi on social media, was unlawful and unprotected by free speech defences.

“Today, justice has prevailed,” Faruqi told reporters outside court in Sydney. “Today’s win is for every single person out there who has been told to go back to where you came from.”

Hanson said in a statement she was disappointed in the outcome, and that public discussion in Australia had become “almost totally silenced by laws and rules which prevent ordinary people expressing their personal views”. “My legal team and I will now closely review the decision in the coming days, with a view to commencing an appeal in the High Court of Australia,” she added.

Published in Dawn, July 28th, 2026