The Australian Federal Police has finished looking into comments Pauline Hanson made about Muslim Australians and decided they do not break the law.

The AFP received several complaints about things Hanson said on Sky News on 16 February 2026. During the segment, Hanson said: "You say, Well, there's good Muslims out there – how can you tell me there are good Muslims?" Guardian Australia reported on 20 February 2026 that federal police had "received reports of a crime" about the comments, which started an assessment under new hate speech laws.

The police checked the comments against a law called the Combatting Antisemitism, Hate and Extremism (Criminal and Migration Laws) Act 2026. The Albanese government passed this law in January 2026 after the Bondi terror attack. The law increased punishments for encouraging or threatening violence and created a way to officially list banned hate groups. Guardian Australia first reported the police decision on 31 July 2026.

The AFP's work on hate speech runs under something called Operation Arques. In a statement on afp.gov.au on 19 December 2025, AFP Commissioner Krissy Barrett said "hate speech and the weaponisation of words can have serious national security consequences." She also said the comments under investigation at the time "do not meet the threshold for terrorism." Barrett put out another statement on 30 December 2025 welcoming the government's plans to strengthen hate speech laws and saying she was concerned about vulnerable adults and young people.

Those statements from December 2025 came nearly two months before anyone formally complained about Hanson. The law that was eventually used to assess her comments had not even passed parliament yet when Barrett spoke.

Before the police finished their assessment, Hanson's fellow senators had already acted. In March 2026, the Senate formally censured Hanson over the Sky News comments. Labor, the Greens, crossbench senators and two Liberals all supported the motion. It was the second time Hanson had been censured in four months. She called it a "stunt." She later told the ABC she did not actually believe there are no "good" Muslims and offered a conditional apology.

The broader context here is about what these new laws can and cannot do. The 2026 law was written to target people who encourage or threaten violence and to break up extremist groups. Hanson's comments were widely condemned, but the police had to measure them against a criminal standard — meaning the bar for actually laying charges. That bar requires more than saying something offensive or inflammatory. The AFP's decision confirms there is a big gap between what the Senate considers worth censuring and what federal police consider worth prosecuting. A censure is a political judgement made by politicians. A criminal threshold is a legal test. They are not meant to give you the same answer, and in this case they did not.

People who worried the new laws might be used against political speech that stops short of encouraging violence will read this outcome carefully. So will people who wanted the post-Bondi laws to give police the power to act when a public figure generalises about an entire religious group. The AFP simply applied the law as it was written: Hanson's comments did not encourage or threaten violence, and the part of the law about banned hate groups was never going to apply to one senator's TV commentary.

What is still up in the air is whether the government will try to pass more laws in this area. The Act was passed in response to a specific national security event. Every time police test the law and find no offence was committed, both sides of the debate get more ammunition — either the laws are too weak, or they are correctly drawing the line at incitement rather than offence. The Hanson case is the first big public test, but it probably will not be the last.