Pauline Hanson appears on the verge of tears as she fires back at a male critic who told her to ‘toughen up – you can dish it out but you can’t take it’
Pauline Hanson has hit back at a male critic who told her to ‘toughen up’ – as she surpasses $500,000 in donations for a legal appeal over her ‘p*** back to Pakistan’ comment.
Earlier this month, the One Nation leader lost a defamation case brought by Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi.
A judge ruled that she had racially defamed Ms Faruqi when she told her to “go back to Pakistan” in a tweet.
In a video posted to
“No, I can handle it,” she muttered. “If I feel like I’m constantly being kicked and kicked and treated completely differently than someone else because of my politics and what I believe in, that’s what upsets me.”
Hanson appeared on the verge of tears at times in the video, claiming she had received a lot of support after losing the case.
“You people, you have my back. The donations you’ve made, even from retirees and people who can least afford it, you’ve given what you could.”
She has vowed to appeal the federal court decision and is currently trying to raise $1 million to cover her legal costs.
Senator Hanson claimed she had received a lot of support after losing the case.
Her donation page showed she was more than halfway toward that goal on Wednesday, having raised $560,000.
In the November judgment, Judge Angus Stewart ruled that Senator Hanson had engaged in ‘seriously offensive’ and intimidating behavior with the tweet.
On the day of Queen Elizabeth’s death, Senator Faruqi had gone to X to offer his condolences to those who knew the monarch.
But she added that she could not mourn the death of the leader of a “racist empire built on stolen lives, lands and wealth from colonized peoples.”
Responding, Senator Hanson said she was shocked and disgusted by the comments.
‘When you emigrated to Australia, you took advantage of all the advantages of this country. Obviously you are not happy, so pack your bags and go back to Pakistan,” she said.
Ms Hanson spent 11 weeks in jail in 2003 after being jailed and acquitted of election fraud (her mugshot is pictured)
Judge Stewart ruled that the tweet was unlawful under section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
The phrase “go back to where you came from” was a racist, anti-immigrant and nativist trope that traced back to the White Australia policy, the judge noted.
He was also highly critical of the One Nation leader as a witness, calling her generally unreliable, argumentative and unwilling to accept obvious truths.
