Australian Senator Pauline Hanson has been barred from Parliament for the rest of the year after staging a protest by wearing a burqa in the Senate chamber, an act colleagues condemned as a “disrespectful stunt” that “mocked and vilified an entire faith.”
Hanson, the leader of the anti-immigration One Nation party, wore the full-face Muslim garment to protest her colleagues’ refusal to consider her bill for a national burqa ban. The Senate first suspended her for the day and then passed a formal censure motion, barring her for seven sitting days—one of the harshest penalties for a senator in recent decades.
Government leader Penny Wong, who moved the motion, stated that Hanson’s “hateful and shallow pageantry… makes Australia weaker” and has “cruel consequences.” Muslim Senator Mehreen Faruqi welcomed the censure as a necessary step to confront “structural and systemic racism.”
Hanson, unrepentant, defended her actions as highlighting hypocrisy. “They didn’t want to ban the burqa, yet they denied me the right to wear it,” she told reporters. This was her second such protest, having first worn a burqa in the chamber in 2017 without punishment. The incident underscores the ongoing tensions in Australian politics over immigration, race, and religious expression.
By James Kisoo
