Australian Senator Pauline Hanson has been barred from the nation’s Parliament until 2026 after wearing a burqa and high heels in the upper house chamber as a protest against the Muslim head-to-ankle covering. She has firmly refused to apologize for her actions and desire to “stand up for women.”
The leader of the One Nation Party was accused of being a “racist” on Monday when she strode into the Senate shrouded in the garment to protest fellow senators’ refusal to consider her bill that would ban the burqa and other full-face coverings in public places, as Breitbart News reported.
Senators suspended her for the rest of the day on Monday, AP reports.
In the absence of an apology, they passed a censure motion Tuesday that carried one of the harshest penalties against a senator in decades. She was barred from seven consecutive Senate sitting days which means she will not return until next year.
The Senate rises for the year on Thursday and Hanson’s suspension will continue when Parliament resumes in February next year, AP notes.
A defiant Hanson later told reporters she would be judged by voters at the next election in 2028, not by her Senate 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.
Outside the Canberra Parliament building Hanson took her critics to task for their hypocrisy and rush to condemn her for “standing up for women.”
She promised, “my future is in the people’s hands, not these gutless politicians.”
The government leader in the Senate, Malaysian-born Penny Wong, who is not Muslim, moved the censure motion on Tuesday.
The left-wing Labor representative said by wearing the burqa, Hanson had “mocked and vilified an entire faith” that was observed by almost one million Australians among a population of 28 million.
“Sen. Hanson’s hateful and shallow pageantry tears at our social fabric and I believe it makes Australia weaker, and it also has cruel consequences for many of our most vulnerable, including in our school yards,” Wong told the chamber.
Pakistan-born Mehreen Faruqi said she and Afghanistan-born Fatima Payman were the only Muslims in the Senate.
“Let this be the start of actually dealing with structural and systemic racism that pervades this country,” Faruqi said of the censure motion.
Payman, who wears a hijab, did not speak in the Senate on Tuesday. But she told Hanson on Monday her use of the burqa was “disgraceful” and “a shame.”
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