is, as an immigrant, a second-class citizen, and that she should be grateful for what she has and keep quiet. It is othering and exclusionary.
222 The second message is that Senator Faruqi should "piss off back to Pakistan." As accepted by Senator Hanson, that is a variant of the slogan, "go back to where you came from" (T158:33). That slogan is a racist trope with a long history. As Professor Wingard explains, the phrase has become a palimpsest that carries with it the connotations that it has carried (and gathered) through history. It carries with it historical anti-immigrant and nativist beliefs with roots, in Australia, that are traceable to the White Australia Policy. As explained by Professor Paradies, the phrase is a common form of racism. In cross-examination, he described it as a "fairly strong form of racism … very exclusionary, and it's very much about who belongs and who doesn't belong" (T112:10-12). The evidence of the autobiographical witnesses gives real-world lived experience credibility to those characterisations.
223 The result is that the tweet carries messages targeting immigrants and people of colour. However, the tweet is also targeted at one person in particular. That is Senator Faruqi. The evidence establishes that she is publicly identified as being a person of colour, an immigrant from Pakistan and Muslim. Her identity as Muslim is inseparable from her identity as an immigrant and a person of colour. Although the tweet does not explicitly target Muslims in Australia, it does so implicitly, both through the reference to Pakistan (ie the Islamic Republic of Pakistan) where 97% of people identify as Muslim and by targeting a prominent Muslim and commanding her to go back to Pakistan. As Colvin J explained in Bharatiya (at [55]), "[t]he lexicon of racist insults is not closed. Many words may take on that character, depending upon matters such as context, tone and allusion to historical events or cultural practices or beliefs." The tweet thus conveys an anti-Muslim message; it is Islamophobic. I will come to consider in more detail below whether Muslims are a protected group within the RDA's quartet of "race, colour or national or ethnic origin."
A person and/or a group of people
224 Turning now to the tweet's effect, para (a) looks to "the likely effect of the act upon a hypothetical person in the circumstances of the applicant or as a member of the relevant group": Bharatiya at [17]. This is an objective inquiry: Hagan v Trustees of the Toowoomba Sports Ground Trust [2000] FCA 1615 at [15] per Drummond J; Creek v Cairns Post Pty Ltd [2001] FCA 1007; 112 FCR 352 at [12]–[13] per Kiefel J; Bropho at [66]; Jones v Scully at [98]–[99]; Clarke at [46]; Bharatiya at [14], [17].
