Melbourne, 25 Nov

Australian Senator Pauline Hanson, who is campaigning for a national burqa ban, was on Tuesday barred from Parliament for the rest of the year after entering the chamber wearing the Muslim garment.

Hanson, 71, leader of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigration One Nation party, was accused of performing a disrespectful stunt on Monday when she walked into the Senate shrouded in a head-to-ankle covering to protest fellow senators’ refusal to take up her bill seeking a public ban on the burqa and other full-face veils.

She was suspended for the remainder of Monday’s sitting. With no apology forthcoming, senators on Tuesday passed a censure motion imposing one of the harshest penalties seen in decades, barring her for seven consecutive Senate sitting days.

The Senate rises for the year on Thursday, meaning Hanson’s suspension will carry over when Parliament returns in February.

Speaking to reporters later, she said she would ultimately be judged by voters at the 2028 election, not by her colleagues.
“They didn’t want to ban the burqa, yet they denied me the right to wear it on the floor of Parliament. There is no dress code on the floor of Parliament, yet I’m not allowed to wear it. So to me, it’s been hypocritical,” she said.

Hanson, who addressed the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida earlier this month, sparked outrage in 2017 when she wore a burqa in the Senate in a similar protest. She was not penalised then.

The government leader in the Senate, Penny Wong who was born in Malaysia but is not Muslim moved Tuesday’s censure motion. Wong said Hanson had “mocked and vilified an entire faith” observed by almost one million Australians out of a population of 28 million.
“Sen Hanson’s hateful and shallow pageantry tears at our social fabric … it makes Australia weaker,” she told the chamber.

Pakistan-born Mehreen Faruqi said she and Afghanistan-born Fatima Payman were the only Muslims in the Senate, noting that in 2017 there were none.
“Let this be the start of actually dealing with structural and systemic racism that pervades this country,” Faruqi said.

Payman, who wears a hijab, did not speak on Tuesday but had told Hanson a day earlier that her act was “disgraceful” and “a shame”.

A judge ruled last year that Hanson breached racial anti-discrimination laws by telling Faruqi in a social media post to return to her homeland. She is appealing.

Rateb Jneid, president of the Australian Federation of Islamic Councils, said Hanson’s use of the burqa was “part of a pattern of behaviour” targeting Muslims, migrants and minorities.