Tony Abbott backs Pauline Hanson’s High Court racial vilification bid

Liberal Party president Tony Abbott has backed Pauline Hanson’s last-ditch attempt to challenge a court ruling that she racially vilified a Greens senator, saying the law posed a risk to free speech.

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 “piss off back to Pakistan” .

Asked about the bid on Saturday, Abbott aligned the Liberals with One Nation on the issue of free speech.

“Certainly on the conservative side of politics we all believe in free speech,” he told reporters in Toowoomba.

“And frankly, section 18C [as it] is currently constituted is a risk to free speech – as we’re seeing.”

Section 18C makes it unlawful to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or group because of their race or ethnicity.

Australia’s complex and contentious hate speech laws have long been a thorny topic for the Coalition and, while Angus Taylor’s opposition is not lobbying for change, Abbott’s comments breathe new life into his decade-old campaign to wind back section 18C.

Abbott failed to scrap the protections against offending, insulting and humiliating as prime minister in 2014, after the push fractured relations with Australia’s Muslim community, was rejected by Jewish groups, and proved unpopular with the wider public.

“ Leadership is about preserving national unity on the essentials and that is why I have taken this position,” Abbott said of the election-promise back-down at the time.

More recently, the Coalition imploded over Labor’s emergency hate speech laws following last year’s Bondi Beach atrocity, caught between wanting to strengthen protections for Jews and preventing religious groups from being snagged in tougher anti-vilification laws.

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.

“Australians have long been able to resolve disputes effectively by thrashing them out,” the opposition leader said.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke called on the opposition to explain which elements of speech it felt were being infringed.

“If the Liberal Party thinks there should be more racist things that they’re allowed to say, tell us what they are because otherwise this is just some weird esoteric debate,” Burke said in Canberra.