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- Politics needs Pauline Hanson.
It’s a deliberately provocative subject line, okay!! But Pauline Hanson has, finally, been found by a court of law to engage in racial discrimination – two years after sending the racist tweet in question, and after 30 years of saying racist things in public and parliament. It will have no impact on her career or level of visibility, because Hanson plays a very specific role in Australian politics: the cartoonish villain.
And while she is a net-negative for Australian society, those in power will always need Hanson (or someone like her) to serve as a convenient distraction and a flattering comparison.
The recap: When Queen Elizabeth II died in October 2022, Faruqi tweeted: “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.”
For literally no reason, Hanson replied to Faruqi, tweeting: “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.”
Faruqi sued Hanson for racial vilification (under the Racial Discrimination Act) in the federal court, in a trial that began in May 2024. Hanson’s defense claimed the tweet a) wasn’t intended to be racist but was merely “fair comment and political communication”, and b) claiming it is racial vilification restricts her freedom of speech.
On Friday, Justice Angus Stewart handed down his ruling: Hanson’s tweet is racist, unlawful and discriminatory. Hanson will have to pay Faruqi’s costs and delete the tweet. She intends to appeal the ruling, of course.
The right judgement has, obviously, been made here. The idea that Pauline Hanson is racist isn’t a debated or controversial one; she just is and we all know it. I doubt this judgement will change any of her beliefs. It might make her slightly tone down the hateful and racist speech she uses in public, maybe, if only to avoid further legal and financial consequences.
Faruqi’s lawyer, Michael Bradley believes this is a landmark ruling that will have an impact on how racist speech is tackled in Australia. He told Guardian Australia that because this case is the first to tackle ‘coded racism’: “It changes the conversation around the limits of tolerance for racist discourse, and certainly it’s something the media should pay very close attention to, public figures like politicians should read it and have a think about their own language and how they engage in public debate and the weaponising of people’s ethnicity or colour against them.”
Which is a fine outcome from the situation. I think it’s good that Hanson suffers some kind of consequence for racially abusing a colleague. I think it’s good to remind people to think carefully about the language they use to communicate ideas, about race or any topic. But it’s not a solution to anything. The feeling is more “relief” and less “win!”
While the trial was taking place I wrote about Toni Morrison’s famous wisdom that racism is used to distract us from doing meaningful work, because we’re forced to waste so much time proving it. “In trying to prove Hanson’s racism, Senator Faruqi – one of only 15 MPs with non-European ancestry (out of 227 in Parliament) – had to spend weeks and months preparing for this case. That’s on top of the days spent in court … It all adds up to time she is not able to spend doing the important work of representing the people of NSW in the Senate. Her time is being successfully wasted.
Lately, a lot of the racial discourse has felt similarly unproductive … It’s not that the topics themselves are unimportant, but that the racial dynamics are so obvious it’s draining trying to convince people they exist. Time that gets lost in closed-loop debate is time that doesn’t go towards making improvements.”
What’s even more clear in my mind now is the extent to which Pauline Hanson’s racism is a distraction that’s not only tolerated, but necessary within Australian political institutions. She’s been in politics for 30 years, and in recent years while the Liberal and Labor parties don’t exactly rush to work with her, they don’t fight very hard against her presence either. Why would they? As long as she’s out here saying and doing blatantly, disgusting racist things, their misdeeds don’t look as bad by comparison.
I can practically hear Anthony Albanese’s inner monologue during the fallout with WA Senator Fatima Payman. “Look, maybe it wasn’t a good look to publicly scold and undermine the only hijabi MP on the issue of Palestinian recognition… But it’s not like I wore a full burqa in Parliament!”
Hanson’s jarring hatefulness has a softening effect on the others, like a subtle beauty filter. They can point to her and remind us, “it could always be worse!”
When there’s an overt racist like Hanson is in a position of power, so much time is wasted on their clownery (in the media, in the parliament, in court) that it seems we never get around to tackling the systemic, structural and incidental racism within government, parliament and political parties.
And even when there is time, so much energy has been wasted on overt clownery that the public ends up too tired to have the more nuanced conversations required for real progress. After spinning our wheels on something as blatant as Hanson’s tweet, how do we navigate back to address more complex problems like racial profiling by police? The government’s continued failure to close the gaps? The backsliding on Treaty processes? Solving the housing crisis (which is not about race at all, except for the blame being assigned to non-white immigrants)?
It’s not solely or specifically Pauline Hanson; there’s always someone like her in public office. Someone who is not afraid to be blatant about it. And the rest of them need that Hanson figure to be the convenient, distracting clown to soak up most of the criticism, suck up the limited energy for difficult conversations about race, and make them look a bit better by comparison.
Anyway, here I am having spent more than 1000 words on it. So maybe I’m the clown too.
Smart stuff on the Internet 💭
All the stuff I found on the web that made me think, smile, or have an ‘aha!’ moment. Spend your Sunday reading them – you'll be better off for it:
Clothes and Cultural Closeness on Kill Your Darlings
A beautiful piece by friend of Zee Feed, Maggie Zhou! "It seems that one of my mum’s favourite pastimes is telling us about how long she’s had certain wardrobe items… Her signature pink dressing gown has several holes in its outer layer, a point she triumphantly shows off like they’re notches on a belt. Old means good because old means care and because old means memories. The way we treat clothes says a lot about who we are."
Is Australia ready for Trump 2.0? on the After America podcast
I’m a big fan of Dr Emma Shortis, and this episode of her podcast has a good, level-headed discussion about what the impact of US presidential election (polls close this Tuesday!) will be for Australia and international cooperation. Not gonna lie, I do feel nervous about the result.
When Does Instagram Decide a Nipple Becomes Female? on 404 Media
“Every week [artist] Ada Ada Ada uploads a shirtless self portrait to Instagram … [which] includes a sequential number, year, and the number of weeks since she started hormone therapy. In 2023, after more than a year into the project, Instagram removed one of Ada Ada Ada’s self portraits for violating Instagram’s Community Guidelines against posting nudity. It was at that moment that Instagram first decided that Ada Ada Ada’s nipples were female, and therefore nudity, which isn’t allowed on the platform.”