165 For a period, Senator Hanson owned and ran a fish and chips business. She says that during that time she spoke to Australians of many different backgrounds, ethnicities and nationalities.
166 She says that after being released from 11 weeks in prison in 2003, having been acquitted on appeal, she went home and noticed that the Australian flag at her house was tattered. She immediately replaced it with a new Australian flag because she was "so proud to be an Australian."
167 Senator Hanson says that she was emotionally distraught on learning of the death of the Queen on the morning of 9 September 2022. The Queen was the only monarch of Australia during her lifetime. She saw the Queen as a sign of constancy. I accept that Senator Hanson loved and respected the Queen as Australia's head of state. There is no suggestion in the evidence that Senator Hanson knew the Queen personally or had had any actual interaction with her.
168 Senator Hanson says that her staff rang her on the morning of the Queen's death and told her about Senator Faruqi's tweet. She was "disgusted" with Senator Faruqi's tweet. She said:
I could not believe that Senator Faruqi would use the hours after a woman's death to say such terrible things about her. Many people across the world were still coming to grips with losing the Queen. But at a time of international and national mourning, Senator Faruqi did not even have the respect to wait a day before viciously insulting her. Even if Senator Faruqi didn't like the Queen, she couldn't even respect the fact that many Australians did.
169 Senator Hanson says that she was also disgusted with what she considered to be Senator Faruqi's hypocrisy. She identified two aspects to that hypocrisy. The first is that Senator Faruqi as a senator swore or affirmed that she would be faithful and bear true allegiance to the Queen yet in her tweet she described the Queen as the "leader of a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples." The second is that Senator Faruqi has "benefitted enormously" from her position in this "racist empire", including in taxpayer funded positions, yet she is critical of Australia.
170 Senator Hanson said she was also disgusted with Senator Faruqi's tweet because she believed that much of it was false, misleading or insincere. In that regard she identified three features.
171 First, she said that she considered Senator Faruqi to be insincere by offering "Condolences to those who knew the Queen" and then she "viciously insults the dead person."
172 Secondly, for the same reason she says that it was insincere of Senator Faruqi to say that she cannot mourn "the leader of a racist empire" etc. That seems to be the same point, which is to
