Senator Lidia Thorpe has apologised to Pauline Hanson for describing her as a “convicted” racist, clarifying she was mistaken about a civil finding of racial discrimination.
Last week Hanson threatened to sue Thorpe for defamation after Thorpe described the One Nation leader as a “convicted racist” in an interview with Channel Nine’s Today.
“Senator Hanson is a ‘convicted’ racist, she has worn a burqa in the chamber, she baits me regularly with racial taunts,” Thorpe had said.
Thorpe was referring to a federal court finding that Hanson had breached the Racial Discrimination Act by telling the Greens deputy leader, Mehreen Faruqi, to “pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan”.
Justice Angus Stewart found that Hanson’s comment to Faruqi was a “variant of the slogan ‘go back to from where you came from’”, which he said was a “racist trope” and a “strong form of racism”. Hanson is appealing against the federal court finding.
On Monday, Thorpe posted to X: “To clarify, I was mistaken that she was ‘convicted’ because it was a civil case.”
In a reply to the post she then added: “Sorry about that Pauline!”
Nine also reportedly issued a statement that it “wishes to clarify that Senator Hanson has not been criminally convicted of racism, and any suggestion to the contrary is unequivocally withdrawn”.
Thorpe was suspended from the Senate on Wednesday for making “inappropriate and sometimes abusive comments”, after she appeared to throw paper at Pauline Hanson during a tense parliamentary debate.
Thorpe angrily interjected during a debate sparked by Hanson unsuccessfully attempting to have the former Labor senator Fatima Payman investigated for an alleged section 44 citizenship issue.
Hanson had alleged Payman had not provided enough documents to prove she had revoked her Afghan citizenship and was therefore ineligible to sit in parliament.
