off back to Pakistan." As I will come to in more detail, that statement is a variation of an age-old racist trope. As Senator Faruqi said in the next exchange, the reference to her national origin was a reference to Pakistan "where almost 100 percent of the people look like me" (T69:1-2). There is nothing unreasonable in Senator Faruqi seeing "colour" being implicit in Senator Hanson's tweet.
58 The third criticism is that Senator Faruqi claimed to hold the view that there is no place for offensive conduct or comments in day-to-day political discourse despite her own political comments including in relation to Prime Minister Scott Morrison in 2019 (T82:43-46). Senator Faruqi had said the following in her affidavit in the context of explaining why she felt insulted by Senator Hanson's tweet:
I don't think there is a place for offensive conduct or comments in day-to-day political discourse. I feel offending and insulting comments are often couched as robust debate, but I think there is a clear line between being insulting and offensive to someone and robust debate. You can have really good, robust debate without being offensive or insulting.
It was put to Senator Faruqi that she was not being honest when she said that, which she denied (T82:47). The asserted basis for dishonesty, which was not put to Senator Faruqi, is that on 10 December 2019 during the severe New South Wales bushfires at that time, Senator Faruqi had posted a tweet saying "just fuck off" in response to it being said that the Prime Minister had rejected calls for more assistance to fire fighters (T52:12-35; Exh R5/3). In that earlier exchange, Senator Faruqi had accepted that her tweet used very strong language but she defended it on the basis that it did not attack anyone personally and it was not racist. Although the tweet might be regarded as attacking the Prime Minister personally, that is not really the point. The point is that one can simultaneously hold a belief that there is no place for offensive and insulting conduct and comments in day-to-day political discourse, yet on one occasion more than four years earlier have publicly made an offensive or insulting comment about a political opponent. There is no basis on which the reliability of Senator Faruqi's evidence can be criticised on that inconsistency or tension, if indeed it is that.
59 In the circumstances, I consider Senator Faruqi's evidence to have been unshaken in cross-examination and I accept it.
Autobiographical witnesses
60 Senator Faruqi relies on the evidence of nine witnesses who were referred to at trial as the autobiographical witnesses. Each is a person who responded to a public invitation published
