245 Even the characterisation of the British empire as "a racist empire built on stolen lives, land and wealth of colonised peoples" is not an expression of some fringe or revisionist historiography. Although confronting to some people, its underlying factual premises in relation to Australia find support in Mabo v Queensland (No 2) [1992] HCA 23; 175 CLR 1 (at 42) where Brennan J (with whom Mason CJ and McHugh J agreed) explained that "the rights and interests in land of the indigenous inhabitants of settled colonies [was justified by] an unjust and discriminatory doctrine", and that "[t]he proposition that the Crown became the beneficial owner of all colonial land on first settlement has been supported by more than a disregard of indigenous rights and interests" (at 43). Justices Deane and Gaudron recognised the violent dispossession of the Aboriginal inhabitants of their land by the colonists (at 104-109), and that "in some areas of the continent, the obliteration or near obliteration of the Aborigines were the inevitable consequences of their being dispossessed of their traditional lands" (at 106). Also, in Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, Racist Violence: Report of the National Inquiry into Racist Violence in Australia (1991) is documented the history of racist violence in Australia, including that during a 160-year period of dispossession of Aboriginal people from their land, some 20,000 Aboriginal people who were British subjects were killed in frontier conflicts (at 37–44).
246 I accept that Senator Faruqi received a lot of criticism in response to her tweet before Senator Hanson's tweet was posted, demonstrating that some people regarded it as controversial and even offensive. But that is not the perspective of the relevant reasonable group member or reasonable targeted person, and it is not a factor that would lessen the effect of Senator Hanson's tweet on them. Indeed, Senator Hanson's intervention in that existing state of affairs which inflamed the racist responses and gave space to others to say what they might not otherwise have said is more readily seen as exacerbating those effects.
247 The hypothetical reasonable reader would also see no hypocrisy in Senator Faruqi's tweet that might somehow lessen the impact of the racist response to it (leaving to one side the question of whether racist invective in public discourse could ever be "justified" as a response to hypocrisy, real or perceived). There is no hypocrisy in swearing formal allegiance to the Queen as head of state in the conduct of one's responsibilities as Senator and being critical of British colonialism and the monarchy as an institution and advocating for constitutional change. Senator Hanson is herself highly critical of aspects of Australian society and public policy, as she is entitled to be and as one would expect of a politician always in opposition to the government of the day. She is no more hypocritical for that, than Senator Faruqi is for what she said.
