Pauline Hanson has threatened to take Emily Kim, a Brisbane city councillor to the Human Rights Commission, claiming racial vilification for Kim describing One Nation as “racist”.
Kim, a Labor councillor received a letter from Hanson’s legal representative Donald Bundesen by email on 25 October, the day before Queensland’s state election.
It referenced a campaign email blast Kim sent criticising the Liberal National party for putting “the racist One Nation Party” above a Labor state MP on their how to vote cards.
Bundesen of Brisbane law firm Connect Law, mistakenly addressed the letter to “Councillor Emily Ward”. Kim represents Brisbane’s Calamvale Ward.
“Be advised councillor you have made “racial comments” as against both Senator Hanson as well as against Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party,” the letter reads.
“Your remarks are without foundation and shows racial vilification and bias as against the Senator and her political party.”
The letter demands Kim take action to apologise publicly, with half page advertisements in the Courier-Mail and the Australian newspapers, by 9 November or an official complaint would be lodged with the Queensland Ombudsman and the Australian Human Rights Commission.
The letter was also forwarded to Brisbane city council “for it to take the necessary personal censorship of your public as the Council deems necessary”.
Kim has engaged prominent Queensland barrister, Anthony Morris KC, who responded by calling the matter “ludicrous”.
“Councillor Kim is disturbed that your clients – a picayune politician and a minor political party – are sending preposterous demands, based on ludicrous threats … for the admitted purpose of “censoring” a political opponent,” Morris wrote to Bundesen.
Morris argued that the state ombudsman only captured complaints about “an agency”, the racial discrimination act does not prohibit calling someone racist, and the term “racial comments” did not exist in statute.
“Senator Hanson has no basis for making a ‘complaint’, whether ‘official’ or otherwise, to either the Queensland Ombudsman or the Australian Human Rights Commission,” he said.
Morris said Kim “would be somewhat disappointed to miss the opportunity of engaging in a court battle with Senator Hanson over the question whether she, and her party, are overtly racist” and invited the party to take them to the federal circuit court.
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A spokesperson for Hanson and One Nation confirmed the letter was sent on their behalf but would not comment further.
Kim was elected to represent the Calamvale ward in Brisbane’s south in March. At 24 she is Brisbane’s youngest councillor and was its first councillor of Korean decent.
Kim described the One Nation letter as “an attack on free speech” and accused Hanson of trying to silence a political opponent.
“You’ve got political chambers, and you’ve got debates for that, so the demand that they’re making was just completely unreasonable.
“I just felt like it was really just intimidation.”
Kim said many politicians had made similar comments about Hanson but was not aware of similar threats.
She said she was standing up for not only Australians of Asian decent but for all Australians.
“Pauline, I would like her to recognise that we’re all proud to be Australian,” Kim said.
“And I think she probably, I suspect she might think that I wouldn’t say something like that. And that’s probably why she sent me this email.”
Hanson was last week found by the federal court to have engaged in racial discrimination against Mehreen Faruqi when she tweeted the Greens senator should “pack your bags and piss off back to Pakistan”.
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