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August 22, 2026 \u2014 7:00pm<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n Liberal Party president Tony Abbott has backed Pauline Hanson\u2019s last-ditch attempt to challenge a court ruling that she racially vilified a Greens senator, saying the law posed a risk to free speech.<\/p>\n Hanson announced on Saturday she would seek leave to appeal to the High Court after the Federal Court upheld a judgment that she had breached section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act when she told Mehreen Faruqi to \u201cpiss off back to Pakistan\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n Asked about the bid on Saturday, Abbott aligned the Liberals with One Nation on the issue of free speech.<\/p>\n \u201cCertainly on the conservative side of politics we all believe in free speech,\u201d he told reporters in Toowoomba.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd frankly, section 18C [as it] is currently constituted is a risk to free speech \u2013 as we\u2019re seeing.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article Section 18C makes it unlawful to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or group because of their race or ethnicity.<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s complex and contentious hate speech laws have long been a thorny topic for the Coalition and, while Angus Taylor\u2019s opposition is not lobbying for change, Abbott\u2019s comments breathe new life into his decade-old campaign to wind back section 18C.<\/p>\n Abbott failed to scrap the protections against offending, insulting and humiliating as prime minister in 2014, after the push fractured relations with Australia\u2019s Muslim community, was rejected by Jewish groups, and proved unpopular with the wider public.<\/p>\n \u201cLeadership is about preserving national unity<\/a> on the essentials and that is why I have taken this position,\u201d Abbott said of the election-promise back-down at the time.<\/p>\n More recently, the Coalition imploded over Labor\u2019s emergency hate speech laws<\/a> following last year\u2019s Bondi Beach atrocity, caught between wanting to strengthen protections for Jews and preventing religious groups from being snagged in tougher anti-vilification laws.<\/p>\n Taylor, appearing alongside Abbott at a press conference ahead of the annual Pollie Pedal charity cycle, said the court case was a matter for Hanson but that free speech was important for debate.<\/p>\n \u201cAustralians have long been able to resolve disputes effectively by thrashing them out,\u201d the opposition leader said.<\/p>\n Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke called on the opposition to explain which elements of speech it felt were being infringed.<\/p>\n \u201cIf the Liberal Party thinks there should be more racist things that they\u2019re allowed to say, tell us what they are because otherwise this is just some weird esoteric debate,\u201d Burke said in Canberra.<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever your views are of the framing of laws or anything like that, I think it\u2019s pretty hard to say we should have more racist hate speech than we currently have.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked whether it was appropriate for there to be legal ramifications for insulting someone, Burke said the law had been developed over years of court decisions and did not have \u201ca low threshold\u201d.<\/p>\n Hanson, whose party has shelled out $800,000 in legal fees in four years<\/a>, said she was launching the High Court challenge to protect the principle of free speech.<\/p>\n \u201cThis case is not about giving politicians special rights. It is about the right of regular Australians to take part in the political debates that shape their country without being frightened into silence,\u201d she said in a statement.<\/p>\n \u201cToo many Australians are afraid to speak honestly about immigration, race, religion, Indigenous policy and other important issues because they worry they will be called racist, dragged through a complaints process or taken to court.\u201d<\/p>\n Hanson\u2019s resurgent minor party wants to enshrine free speech in the Constitution.<\/p>\n Leading constitutional law expert Anne Twomey said earlier this month that Hanson had a case to argue in the High Court, calling the Federal Court\u2019s judgment \u201cvery muddy\u201d in parts.<\/p>\n Twomey questioned why the appeal court had not referenced relevant cases that dealt with freedom of political communication, and said Hanson\u2019s case should be considered by the nation\u2019s highest court.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are important constitutional issues that, in my view, have not been given proper analysis and judgment they deserve,\u201d the professor emerita of constitutional law at the University of Sydney said in a video posted to social media.<\/p>\n Faruqi said after her Federal Court victory that the win was for \u201cevery single person out there who has been told to go back to where you came from\u201d.<\/p>\n On Saturday, she said Hanson had dropped a key pillar of her argument \u2013 that she had not breached the act \u2013 and would instead focus on the question of constitutionality.<\/p>\n \u201cSenator Hanson, having conceded that she broke the law by being racist, is now shamefully trying to dismantle the legal framework that protects people from racist hate speech,\u201d Faruqi said.<\/p>\n Start the day with a summary of the day\u2019s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"Tony](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/34fe7e7e262179dce2a096c7f3dcab9e8fccd27f.jpeg\")
Tony Abbott, pictured in May after his election as Liberal Party president, says section 18C is a risk to free speech.Joe Armao<\/p>\n![\"One](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/53ea3e3d3d6d6785b276d4335b932435637832171854da7fa2126ba359777e4a.jpeg\")
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Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke: \u2033\u2063I think it\u2019s pretty hard to say we should have more racist hate speech than we currently have.\u201d Alex Ellinghausen<\/p>\n![\"Brittany](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/af71def990bb09f8d3ae9269dff8c75c2d45963c.png\")
Brittany Busch<\/a> is a federal politics reporter for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"August 22, 2026 \u2014 7:00pm Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":864368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-864367","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/864368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}