An Australian senator campaigning for a national burqa ban was suspended Tuesday from parliament for the remainder of the 12 months after wearing the garment within the chamber.
Pauline Hanson, the 71-year-old leader of the anti-Muslim, anti-immigrations One Nation minor party, was accused of performing a disrespectful stunt on Monday after she walked into the Senate wearing a burqa to protest fellow senators’ refusal to think about her bill that will ban the burqa and other full-face coverings in public places.
Senators suspended Hanson, who just isn’t Muslim, for the remainder of the day after she reportedly refused to go away the room or remove the burqa. Hanson’s bill to ban the burqa and other full-face coverings in public places was not voted on.
Within the absence of an apology, the Senate passed a censure motion Tuesday that barred Hanson from seven consecutive Senate sitting days.
The Senate might be taking its annual break for the 12 months on Thursday. Hanson’s suspension will proceed when parliament resumes in February next 12 months.
After her suspension was announced, Hanson claimed that One Nation “was stopped from even introducing a Bill, meaning the Parliament couldn’t have a debate.”
“That’s not democracy. The people will judge me after I face the subsequent election. My future is within the people’s hands, not these gutless politicians,” she wrote.
Hanson had pulled the identical political stunt in 2017 when she wore a burqa within the Senate as a type of protest, but she faced no consequences on the time.
On Tuesday, Sen. Penny Wong, who can also be Australia’s foreign minister, said by wearing the burqa, Hanson had “mocked and vilified a whole faith.”
“In her first speech to this House, she said, ‘Australia was in peril of being swamped by Asians,’ people like me. Now she’s added Muslims to the list,” Wong said to the Senate, in a video shared on Facebook. “In my very first speech on this place, I said that because of individuals like her, Australia was in peril of being swamped by hatred.”
Wong said that Hanson’s stunt was “purely to get attention” and “not for the primary time.”
“I consider, and I feel most of this Senate believes, that disrespecting fellow Australians due to their faith is itself un-Australian,” Wong said.
“Sen. Hanson’s hateful and shallow pageantry tears at our social fabric, and I consider it makes Australia weaker, and it also has cruel consequences for a lot of our most vulnerable, including in our schoolyards,” Wong told the Senate.
Mehreen Faruqi said she and Fatima Payman were the one Muslims within the Senate. But when Hanson first wore the burqa in 2017, there have been none.
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“Let this be the beginning of truly coping with structural and systemic racism that pervades this country and let that be grounded in justice,” Faruqi said of the censure motion. ”
“After thirty years of Pauline Hanson spewing vile racism at First Nations people, Muslims, Asians and other people of color, Parliament finally censured her,” Faruqi wrote in the caption of a video she shared of herself speaking before the Senate.
“But thirty years of this racism and discrimination didn’t occur in a vacuum. It happened because each major parties didn’t just look the opposite way — they enabled it, excused it, and let it fester.
“Now this Parliament is drowning in the implications. I stood up today to say: no more.”
Payman told Hanson on Monday that her use of the burqa was “disgraceful” and “a shame.”
“So Pauline Hanson was not allowed to maneuver her bill to ban the burqa today and what does she do in retaliation? Chucks on the burqa and walks into the chamber, like seriously? You probably did this in 2017 and got condemned but clearly it felt like she was itching for an additional stunt,” Payman said in a video posted to Instagram on Monday.
She also shared a photograph of Hanson wearing a burqa while she was seated behind her, writing, “The face you make if you got here to work to vote on laws but your colleague wants attention.”
In response to the criticism, Hanson took to X on Monday and claimed that “the standard hypocrites had an absolute freak out” by her stunt.
“Today I wore a burqa into the Senate after One Nation’s bill to ban the burqa and face coverings in public was blocked from even being introduced,” Hanson wrote.
“The very fact is greater than 20 countries all over the world have banned the Burqa because they recognise it as a tool that oppresses women, poses a national security risk, encourages radical Islam and threatens social cohesion,” she continued. “If these hypocrites don’t want me to wear a burqa, they will at all times support my ban.”
In 2017, Hanson wore the black head-to-ankle garment for greater than 10 minutes before removing it as she stood to clarify that she wanted the outfits banned on national security grounds.
“There was a big majority of Australians (who) want to see the banning of the burqa,” said Hanson as senators objected.
Attorney General George Brandis drew applause when he said his government wouldn’t ban the burqa, and chastised Hanson for what he described as a “stunt.”
“To ridicule that community, to drive it right into a corner, to mock its religious garments is an appalling thing to do, and I’d ask you to reflect on what you will have done,” Brandis said.
“It’s one thing to wear religious dress as a sincere act of religion; it’s one other to wear it as a stunt here within the Senate,” Wong told Hanson.
Australian One Nation party leader, Sen. Pauline Hanson, removes a burqa within the Senate chamber at Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, on Aug. 17, 2017.
AAP/Mick Tsikas/via Reuters
— With files from The Associated Press
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