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*** off back to Pakistan’ comment.
Earlier this month the One Nation leader lost a defamation case brought by Greens Senator Mehreen Faruqi.
A judge found she had racially vilified Ms Faruqi when she told her to ‘p*** off back to Pakistan’ in a tweet.
In a video posted to X on Wednesday, Hanson said someone had since messaged her saying ‘toughen up – you can dish it out but you can’t take it.’
‘No, I can take it,’ she fumed. ‘When I feel that I’m continually being kicked and kicked and treated totally different to someone else because of my politics and what I believe in, that’s where it upsets me.’
Hanson occasionally appeared on the verge of tears in the video, and claimed she’d received a flood of support after losing the case.
‘You the people, you got behind me. The donations that you’ve made, even from pensioners and people that can least afford it, you’ve given what you can.’
She has vowed to appeal the Federal Court decision and is currently trying to raise $1million to cover her legal costs.
Her donation page showed she was already more than halfway towards that goal on Wednesday, having raised $560,000.
In the November judgment, Justice Angus Stewart found Senator Hanson engaged in ‘seriously offensive’ and intimidating behaviour with the tweet.
The day of Queen Elizabeth’s death, Senator Faruqi had taken to X to offer condolences to those who knew the monarch.
But she added she could not mourn the passing of the leader of a ‘racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples’.
In a response, Senator Hanson said she was appalled and disgusted by the comments.
‘When you immigrated to Australia you took every advantage of this country. It’s clear you’re not happy, so pack your bags and p*** off back to Pakistan,’ she said.
Justice Stewart found 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 traceable 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.